Softmaker Office 2010
SoftMaker Office 2010
Reviewed May, 2010
What’s It Do?

The suite consists of 4 programs: TextMaker 2010 is a word processor that reads and writes Microsoft Word documents; PlanMaker 2010 is a fully Excel-compatible spreadsheet application to create worksheets; Presentations 2010 creates graphic presentation programs; and, BasicMaker 2010 is a scripting language and environment that enables the user to automate recurring tasks.


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request. Yes. SoftMaker Office 2010 accurately reads, processes and saves its own, or Microsoft’s, word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation files.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: SoftMaker Office 2010 is a less expensive alternative to that “other” well-known office suite. At about $80 US, it is considerably cheaper than the Microsoft Office Suite. The SoftMaker suite is offered in versions for Windows and Linux in the 2010 release and for Windows Mobile and Windows CE in the 2008 version.

SoftMaker responds: Beta for 2010 for Windows Mobile starts second week of May, 2010.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: Yes. The SoftMaker Office Suite offers programs compatible to the MS Office set: TextMaker (Word), PlanMaker (Excel) and Presentation (PowerPoint). Although there are some differences in the Menu and Toolbars, it is not difficult to move from the MS Set to SoftMaker Office. There are two additional modules. "BasicMaker" can be used to create scripts or programs to automate repetitive tasks in SoftMaker Office. "Explorer" gives quick access from its icon in the System Tray to some of the most often-used features of Windows (the Desktop, Start Menu, Recent Documents, Control Panel, etc) as well as some of the options of the whole SoftMaker Office suite.

SoftMaker responds: That program is called “SMASH” (SoftMaker Application Shell).

Reviewer 4 – Mark Snyder: Yes. This is an office suite that rivals Microsoft Office only, it is less expensive, less resource hungry, much smaller, and much, much faster. The suite contains four applications. TextMaker is a word processor nearly identical to Microsoft Word; PlanMaker is a spreadsheet application similar to Excel; a slideshow application that is called Presentations and very similar to PowerPoint; and a programming language macro creation tool called BasicMaker. As promised, the program’s applications were near seamless in their ability to read and write all major file formats and thus offered near full interoperability with these Microsoft products.


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request. This was one of the biggest/longest downloads I have encountered. It took between 15 and 20 minutes to download over a DSL connection.
The first time it ran, it asked for the name, email address, and registration code which had been sent via email in order to register the software. This was accepted fine, but then I got a Warning window with message "No Printer driver installed or no default printer selected. Please install a driver if you want to be able to print" appeared despite my having multiple printers installed and having a default printer set. This happened on my initial installation on Windows XP (SP3). It did not occur with a subsequent installation under Windows 7.

SoftMaker responds: It seems the default printer on this system is the “Generic/Text only”. This printer driver cannot print at all, it is just a placeholder, so it is a safety net for the customer.

I appreciated was that the installation gave full control over whether to associate file types with it. Thus allowing a user to run this suite while leaving competing software to run unaffected if so desired.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: Like many applications, this one offered three levels of installation: Typical, Custom and Complete. As usual, I chose the “custom” offering so that I could see and choose exactly what was getting installed. The actual installation was very straightforward and typical. I had no problems. During the installation there are several “decision points” that need to be addressed. Items such as which file extension associations to create that will then open with the appropriate SoftMaker module. On opening TextMaker the first time, additional information is required for later document creation and two separate identities may be created, one personal and one for business that have different data.

During the installation, this application attempts to install a feature called “Smash” as a startup item to place icons for each of the four modules in the system tray on startup. All programs should ask before installing any startup items and give the option to choose not to do so. There is an option to not install Smash but there is no explanation of what it is so one can intelligently make the decision.

SoftMaker responds: Point well taken. We are changing the setup program at this moment to give more details about what SMASH does. We will also default to “not install” SMASH on Windows 7, since most of its functionality is now available through regular Windows 7 means.

The actual install folder for SoftMaker was quite extensive, containing entries for each of the four applications and a folder called “Documentation” containing a complete user manual for each application as well as a folder called “Utilities” the contained the Smash application, a link to SoftMaker on the web as well as instructions for installing the suite on a USB key.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: Yes. The installation file is about 130 MB, and took 17 minutes to download on a fast cable connection. The "Custom" installation procedure is similar to that of other Suites such as Open Office or MS Office. It allowed me to select the features I wanted to include; for example, I was able to chose two versions of English (British and US) and French, from the languages available. The only choice I was not able to make was where I wanted the program files to be located.

SoftMaker responds: This is not correct. When you choose a “Custom install”, there is a “Browse” button at the bottom of the installation options. This button allows the user to choose an arbitrary folder for the program files.

Once the installation was completed, there were five new icons in my system tray: one for each of the applications, and one for Soft Office Explorer. There is a manual in pdf format for each of the SoftMaker modules: (TextMaker, PlanMaker, Presentations and BasicMaker), each of which only took a few seconds to download.

Reviewer 4 – Mark Snyder: Yes. While it is not a small download at 132MB and does require 230MB of disc space, it is tiny compared to its competitor, Microsoft Office that is a 288MB download and requires a whopping 2GB of drive space! There is a standard wizard to aid in installation that was smooth and event-free as was the registration. There is a minimum of configuration necessary with most default options properly checked. I was surprised that it wanted to place itself in my start folder and offered no desktop icon. The EULA (End user License Agreement) was by far the most intelligible, straightforward, and liberal license I have seen in a long time—maybe ever. There was no legalese or threats, and each license allows for use of the software on three computers. This liberal licensing is enough, all things being equal, to make this program one hard to pass up. The program uninstalls relatively cleanly for the size of the program, leaving only a few remnants in the Registry. One word of caution however: If one uses an aggressive uninstaller such as Revo or JV16 Powertools that cleans the Registry as a part of the uninstall process, each entry should be checked carefully since there may not be a differentiation between SoftMaker Office and other installed office programs such as Microsoft Office or Open Office.


Good points.

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request: Those familiar with Microsoft Office will be quickly comfortable with the programs in SoftMaker Office 2010. The suite contains a word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation program, and a scripting program.

I used TextMaker, the word processor, much more often than the other programs in everyday use. I found it to be easy to use and generally intuitive. A short browse through the menus allowed me to set my general preferences for how I like my word processors to work. The most notable customizations I made were control of automatic backups and turning on automatic spell checking as I type (which was turned off by default).

All of the Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files I opened with SoftMaker Office displayed and ran easily and accurately. Formatting, charting, formula entry, layout, and text entry all performed without difficulty.

There are some advanced tools to get repetitive processes automated and streamlined. For example, opening a new document presents a menu of templates for various common document types (letters, memo’s, fax, etc) as well as options to prefill sections of the document with information stored on an internal database, e.g., recipient’s name, address, salutation, etc). For the extreme limit of automation, BasicMaker is SoftMaker’s scripting program. It appears very similar in structure to the Basic programming language and can perform powerful manipulation of text and numeric data from a wide range of sources.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: After using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel as well as similar offerings from Open Office for many years, I found this application both familiar and just a bit different in some ways but, overall, quite easy to use. It easily handled all the various Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slideshows that I tried. It is a very suitable and much less expensive option to the full-on office suite from Microsoft.
Once I referred to the help files to locate what was different, The word processor and spreadsheet application were very easy to use and worked as expected with some exceptions. (see “weak points” below).

I enjoyed using SoftMaker Presentations, the PowerPoint analog, to create several slide shows about my newest puppy. All the options for backgrounds, styles, transitions and formatting were easy to use and apply. The pictures imported well and were easily resized inside the program to fit the screen area needed. there was a large selection of styles, backgrounds, fonts and transitions, video, and audio available.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: I started my word processing career many "eons" ago with Bank Street Writer, and then moved to WordStar; my first spreadsheet was VisiCalc. Since those long-ago 5½” floppy disk days, I have used quite a variety of Word Processing and Spreadsheet programs. In the struggle for markets, Word and Excel have become the dominant winners in the competition, so their formats have become ubiquitous. Of necessity, then, the most important feature of any possible alternative program to the MS Office suite is its ability to read and write to the .doc and all the other Office formats. With the 2007 version of the MS Behemoth come new formats, not compatible with the old ones, so one must buy the new MS offering, or go through hoops to be able to just read those new files. One of the greatest pleasures of using the SoftMaker Suite is that it handles all of the MS Office files, from older ones to the newest ones. With no effort, one can open all those file, and write them back to disk in the newest as well as the older MS file formats, or in the SoftMaker format, if desired. Any of my previous documents that had been prepared either with MS Office or with OpenOffice.org Write opened easily with SoftMaker Office, as did any PowerPoint documents.

Any SoftMaker Office file can be saved in .pdf format directly from the Toolbar or from the File Menu. As with many of the other SoftMaker functions, with “Export as PDF”, there are a number of options that can be set before the pdf file is saved to disk.

The Menu structure, the features and the functions of the SoftMaker Office Suite are all comparable to MS Office, but not exactly the same. As with any new program, one must sometimes search a bit to find a particular function that is not necessarily in the same place as it would be in the MS Set. When I got stuck looking for a feature that I could not find, I could get rapid assistance from the SoftMaker Forum. On one occasion, the MS Office feature did not exist in SoftMaker. The developers told me so, and another user chimed in explaining why he hated that particular function in MS Word, and was happy that it is not in TextMaker.

Any time that I had a question about the program, I turned to the SoftMaker Forum. Taking into consideration the difference in time zones, answers from the developers themselves, were usually posted within one hour of my submission. The fact that they are carefully monitoring the forum speaks to their interest in the questions that users have, as well as other comments. In fact, not only is there the forum and direct support available by email, there is also a specific page for feedback, ideas and suggestions about their programs. According to the information on their Web site, the company has been in existence since 1987, with the development of Word Processing programs as the core of their business. The fact that they are still responding to their users and that they are continuing to develop their programs indicates that SoftMaker Office will continue to be here for some time.

One of the unexpected surprises that I have had with SoftMaker is the variety of fonts that are available. When I first installed the program, I could also add a dozen or so new, free fonts. New fonts are made available on a regular basis.

The licencing offered by SoftMaker could be a model for other software developers, and suits my own needs perfectly. From the licence agreement: You may EITHER install and use one copy of the Software on up to 3 (three) computers simultaneously, so long as all of these computers belong to the same household or company at the same physical location; ALTERNATIVELY, you may install one copy of the Software on up to 5 (five) computers that are owned by the same person or company, so long as only one copy of the Software is in use at any given time. You can move the program from one computer to another, and so on, without the program "checking home" or using other methods that suggest that they do not trust their users of trying to cheat them.

Reviewer 4 – Mark Snyder: This is a near clone of Microsoft Office programs and as such, and for the sake of brevity, I will assume that most readers of these reviews are familiar with how those programs look so I will not spend time detailing the workings of each program. Suffice it to say that the user familiar with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint will be using their SoftMaker counterparts in just a few seconds; and what can be done on those Microsoft programs can as easily be done (more easily in many instances) with the SoftMaker equivalents. Even the GUI (Graphic User Interface) will look relatively familiar. So, I will simply point out those items, which I think make this a better, or at least equal, choice to its competitors.

Price: This program retails for $80.00 as compared to $400.00 for its equivalent Microsoft Office product. And while there is no email program, I think this is more than offset by the $320.00 in savings.

Size, resource usage, and speed: This program weighs in at a slender 132MB as opposed to 388MB for the Microsoft program; the disc space required is 230MB as compared to a huge 2G for Microsoft Office; it requires only 64MB of RAM memory as opposed to the 256MB required as a (unrealistic) minimum for Microsoft; it used approximately 50% less memory while running with, for example, TextMaker consuming approximately 12MB of RAM compared to Microsoft Word using 30MB on average. Finally, unlike its counterpart, the SoftMaker application opens in literally 2-3 seconds and is generally blazingly fast in use.

SoftMaker offers as a standard part of each application a PDF creation tool to export to PDF in every application, something that is not available in Microsoft Office.

TextMaker offers an excellent spell-checker, a reasonable thesaurus, a language translator, and an easy-to-use drop down box for those always hard to find special characters hidden in Microsoft Word.

Presentation has all of the features expected in PowerPoint including the use of DirectX technologies for creating attractive animations and transitions.

The entire application can be run from a thumb drive. Try that with Microsoft Office!

Support: There is email support as well as by telephone, but be aware that this is not a toll-free number and it is an international call to Germany; however, the chances of needing either of these two types of support is highly unlikely as there is an exceptional users forum which seems to be constantly manned by the developers. It has over 2,000 registered members, over 17,000 posts, is extremely active, and support questions are answered seven days a week—often as quickly as in two hours or less. In addition, there is a developer’s blog that offers news as well as tips; a newsletter, a “Tips & Tricks” section on the Web Site, excellent help files, and downloadable user’s manuals for each of the separate applications.

Again, each of the above applications worked well in my testing. This is really an exceptional office suite that can easily replace the bloated and expensive Microsoft Office products, and has none of the interoperability problems of many of the free office programs such as Open Office.


Weak points.

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request: This program suite is well designed to go head-to-head against Microsoft Office, but does not substitute well for other competitors such as Corel’s suite that includes WordPerfect and QuattroPro. I have a complex spreadsheet that I designed with QuattroPro but I could find no way to import it or open it.

While the look and feel of this software was familiar and comfortable, some of the keyboard shortcuts were different than those of MS Office. During months of use with this suite, I was not able to break the habit of hitting the keyboard combinations, most notable of which was the “Alt+E,F” combination to search for text within a document. SoftMaker’s equivalent combination, “Alt+E, H” was one, which I just could not adjust to. When I found the “Keyboard Mappings” function, I attempted to change the shortcut to my preference. While it did accept and register my preferred keyboard shortcut, it did not work when I returned to the main part of the program.

Templates can be chosen for a variety of document formats. The main weakness I found here was that choosing the template was a “blind process”; i.e. there was no preview available to show the format of the document.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: While no major problems were discovered, there were some moderate to minor annoyances that I did find:

When opening an existing Word document that had “pen” annotations such as a written signature, the annotations were not included or were only partially there;

While it may be something particular to my setup’s security software or user account control, I got continuous “warnings” every time I opened the programs that stated that it was trying to “modify a critical item”;

The spell checker seemed to be very intrusive and I finally turned it off. It seemed to have some inherent lag or something that was causing it to trigger just a little bit late and subsequently insert corrections at the end of the line rather than as the flagged word. This annoying behavior is apparently quite common and has been commented on in the Forum;

SoftMaker responds: I am totally unaware of any such issue, let alone one being commented upon in the Forum. I am genuinely interested in finding out what’s going on. Are you willing to contact me about this? (email address provided to Reviewer)

TextMaker did not recognize keyboard ANSI commands for special characters, so in order to insert a special character one must use the drop-down insert symbol menu. This can be problematic for someone accustomed to using the keyboard shortcuts for these symbols.

None of the applications were “pen aware” meaning that they did not recognize any type of digital stylus input correctly or at all;

There is no ability to format a range of cells as a group in a spreadsheet or worksheet. I often build spreadsheets to keep track of miscellaneous data. Some of this data has a + symbol as the first character. PlanMaker automatically flagged this as a calculation cell and messed up my input. Apparently, there is a workaround for this on a limited, cell-by-cell basis by putting an apostrophe in front of the first character. While this is doable, it is not a very elegant nor satisfactory solution;

SoftMaker responds: It is also possible to switch from automatic recognition to text mode by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F4.

The program is a resource hog and all of the applications contained in the SoftMaker suite are very resource intensive. The saves were painfully slow and I saw resource consumption of up to 48% of CPU power at times. This is not a heavily graphical application and there is no reason they should consume as much of one’s computing power, even on a 2.4 gigahertz dual core machine with three gigs of RAM.

SoftMaker responds: Very strange. This is in total contradiction to what the other testers in this review said, and also in contradiction to our own experience. I wonder if there is something special in this tester’s setup that causes this. SoftMaker Office even runs beautifully on small Pocket PCs, so there should be no reason whatsoever it should be sluggish on a 2.4 GHz dual core machine. Again, I offer to investigate this.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: I have very few complaints about this program, so I am limited more to suggestions than to real criticisms. In other spreadsheet programs, clicking on the “=” button in the toolbar begins a formula. With PlanMaker, this brings up a dialog box with a number of different options, which usually complicates, rather than simplifies, the process of making one of my elementary little calculations; however, I eventually found that using the”=” key on the keyboard allowed me to start my formula without the extra dialog box.

I often use the free OpenOffice.org program in place of the MS Suite, so I have many files that I have saved in those formats. Fortunately, TextMaker can open edit the Open Office Write files directly, without any intervening steps; however, it cannot open the Calc (.ods) format. If I wish to use PlanMaker to work on files that I have previously created with OpenOffice Calc, I have first to use Calc to save them as Excel (.xls) files, then open those files with PlanMaker. Apparently, the SoftMaker developers have OpenOffice Calc in their future plans. I do hope that they will move this one up the wish list.

As the Forum is such a good resource, I would like to see a direct link to it under the Help Menu, in addition to the link that is already there to the SoftMaker Web site.

Reviewer 4 – Mark Snyder: I almost hesitate to mention any weaknesses or areas I think need improvement because I suspect they might have been corrected by the time this review is published. This seems to be the kind of constant and continual attention to development given to this program.

One application which I have barely mentioned and that is the programming language program called BasicMaker. Quite frankly, I think this is a waste of space and resources and might be better served if offered as an optional add-on or sold separately. It is essentially a programming tool based on BASIC, a simple if verbose syntax that has been around forever; however, it can not produce stand-alone applications and is really only a scripting engine for making macros within the SoftMaker applications. The problem is that, although not a full programming application, it still requires a fairly high level of knowledge with general programming—especially application coding—but offers no true tutorial or serious help. For example, in Flow Control it discusses types of “loop” and assumes that one knows what that term means in programming language. I suspect 99% of people purchasing this program have no idea what I am talking about here.

SoftMaker responds: I agree :-). It’s a tool for advanced users. But we shall soon be introducing a concept called “SoftMaker Office Extensions (similar to what Firefox offers) that will extend the feature set of our applications with specialized features. These extensions will be available in BasicMaker source code, making them a great learning source for budding macro writers.

Pagination was changed and was different when opening the same document in TextMaker and Office 2007.

TextMaker has some difficulty with handling smart quotes in that it does not always recognize the appropriateness of single quotes when used with double quotes, for example ‘.”

There were occasional slow downs when scrolling through documents in TextMaker when they contained several graphics.

SoftMaker responds: This should be addressed in Revision 584 that was released May 6, 2010. You can download a free service pack by selecting Help/Check for Upgrades in our applications.

There needs to be a split screen option available in TextMaker for doing side-by-side checking and comparisons.

I was unable to decode Microsoft Office 2007 spreadsheets properly using PlanMaker.

SoftMaker responds: PlanMaker does have support for XLSX import, and Revision 584 is much improved in this regard. If 584 does not fix your problem, I would love to see the offending file.


Developer's Web site.

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request: The Web site is a bit heavy on promises and generalities in the opening pages but does get down to details as one drills down. There is a forum with sections dedicated to each program in the suite. Representatives from the company are active in responding to questions on the forum and often indicate that issues brought up on the forum result in changes in subsequent releases.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: The SoftMaker Web site was minimalist to the point of almost being Spartan. It was easy to navigate and find the information that I was looking for, so it serves its purpose quite well.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: It is a very well laid-out Web site. There is a "path" diagram -- something like a "site map" -- across the top of all the pages on the site. This let me see exactly where I am, and allows quick access to the other pages on the site. There are little corners that I found interesting. One is a small Tips and Tricks section. Another is the Product timeline, that goes back to the 1987 DOS-based TextMaker 1.0 word processor program. The site is not cluttered up with annoying, flashy banners or panels on the side, extolling the virtues of their products. Although they certainly are promoting their programs, they are also providing useful information and helpful links to people interesting in learning about SoftMaker. There is a monthly newsletter as well as a blog.

Reviewer 4 – Mark Snyder: The Web site is professional in appearance, well laid out, easy to navigate, and does not contain a lot of superfluous snippets from anonymous reviewers that only detracts from the credibility of a product. I want to especially commend the developers on making the License Agreement available for reading and printing on the Web Site. This allows a user to inspect the terms of any purchase before the purchase, which is the right way to do things.


Other comments.

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request: There is no database program included in this suite. An employee on the forum reports that there is one in beta testing but that it is a long way from release. Three computers are licensed to run this suite in the purchase price. A free 30-day trial installation is also available.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: Over the several month time frame during which I was testing the software at least one update was offered, possibly more. My version number went from 573 of the original install to version number 579 that occurred a week or two ago.

In spite of a few annoyances, I had no problem making a comfortable transition to this suite of applications as my full-time word processor, spreadsheet and slide presentation software. It saves me from the need to update my 2003 version of Microsoft’s Office to the latest version Office 2010 at some considerable expense.

SoftMaker offers support primarily via its online Forum. There is also an email option.
I used both. The email turn around was fast with a reply in three hours. The Forum took a bit longer with my question answered the next day. Since SoftMaker is located in Germany, there will be some time zone issues.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: There is a 30-day trial. Writing to Microsoft Office file formats is allowed only during the first seven days.

SoftMaker responds: We have since removed the 7-days limitation. Now the trial can be used for 30 days, with all features staying enabled.

Updates come in the form of Service Packs and I received notices of new service packs via email. They are also available under Help Menu > Check for Updates. During the five months that I have been using this program, I had several updates, so it is clear that SoftMaker is under continuing development and improvement. Service Pack installations were very simple. It took 2-3 seconds to do the actual update, faster than the download itself.

I am not a "power user" of the Office set. My needs are fairly modest, and most of the functions in the MS Office suite simply wasted hard disk space on my computer. When I have had to reformat my computer and reinstall my programs, the struggle to wrestle the Office onto my computer is always an exercise in frustration. So, it is certainly a pleasure to find a program such as this one that installs easily and does all I need. At its full price, it is competitive with the student cost of MS Office. Better, SoftMaker offers educational pricing which brings the cost of this program down to the same price level as many other, much simpler programs. I note that SoftMaker has announced the development of a new Database program that should soon be available for beta testing (usually the stage before a program is stable enough to be released to the public). With my experience with the current modules of the SoftMaker Office, I am looking forward to this new addition to the suite.

Reviewer 4: Mark Snyder: This Nuremberg, Germany company has been in constant development of this program for a number of years and seems not only proud of and dedicated to the program but dedicated to its customers. This is evident by its almost hourly interaction with its customers on the user forum as well as in its solicitation of customer comments on the Web site. This is the kind of company with which one wants to do business. This, when combined with a solid program at a price that is a fraction of its competitor’s, makes it easy for me to recommend this program fully.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1 – Name withheld by request: While I like using SoftMaker Office 2010, it essentially duplicates the Microsoft Office functionality I already have. Since MS Office has the added functionality of a database (MS Access) I will probably prefer to keep the Microsoft suite and remove SoftMaker Office. I may install it on another computer where I do not have an office suite installed. For one making a new purchasing decision, I would not hesitate to recommend SoftMaker Office 2010.

Reviewer 2 – Dana Bostick: As I mentioned above, I already have the full Microsoft Office Suite 2003 version installed on all of my computers. There really is no compelling need for me to change at this point as it is working fine. If I were in the market for a suite of applications such as this one, SoftMaker would definitely be a contender since it is fully functional and considerably lower priced.

Reviewer 3 – Peter Royle: Yes. I am now using it for most of my "Office Suite" needs.

Reviewer 4 – Mark Snyder: Yes. Once my Windows XP and copy of Word 2003 on my desktop finally gives up, I see no reason to upgrade to another bloated and over-priced Windows program when all that I need is right here in SoftMaker Office 2010.

OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN THIS REVIEW
Windows 7, Vista Home Premium, XP Pro, XP Home, XP Media Center Edition

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