icWord & icExcel

Do you receive either Microsoft Word or Excel documents from friends and colleagues via email or on floppy, but you don't have Microsoft Office and thus can't open them?

Do you have the same problem accessing ClarisWorks or AppleWorks Word Processor documents or Spreadsheets?

Well, now there is an extremely economical solution to open all these files on your Macintosh - Panergy's icWord and icExcel applications.

These applications allow you to open any Microsoft Word, Excel, AppleWorks Word Processor or AppleWorks Spreadsheet that originated from either a Macintosh or a Windows machine, without requiring you to have Microsoft Office nor AppleWorks installed on your Macintosh.

The process is quite simple - literally drag the document on to the appropriate "icApp"; eg Word documents on icWord or Spreadsheets on to icExcel.

Alternatively, launch the "icApp" and use the Open command from the File menu and select the document you wish to open.

icWord or icExcel will then display the document.

You can search the documents using powerful, yet simple to use, Find commands.

You can scale the documents or parts of them. In icExcel you can resize the width or height or columns and rows.

In icWord, you can have the document read out aloud to you.

You can print the documents opened by icWord or icExcel.

You can also convert documents from Microsoft Word or Excel to AppleWorks or Text formats.

icWord

http://www.icword.com »

icExcel

http://www.icexcel.com »

Default Application to open

Both application's documentation include instructions on how to make icWord or icExcel the default application to use to display documents in many popular application, including the Finder, Eudora Pro, Netscape and Outlook Express.

Anyone who does not have Microsoft Office and/or AppleWorks will want to do this and even those who have the full Microsoft Office may wish to seriously consider doing it well!

Did I hear you ask "Why?" - Well the answer is simple!

Neither icWord nor icExcel support Macros! This means there is no chance of you infecting your system with a virus, even if the document does contain a virus.

WARNING: You should always be running a CURRENT anti-virus package like Norton Anti-Virus or Virex, along with the current month's virus definitions applied to protect yourself against other viruses!

Since neither icWord nor icExcel support Macros, this means there is no chance of you infecting your system with a virus!

Obtaining icWord or icExcel

Both icWord and icExcel can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet as 30-day trial versions. To continue to use them after the trial period, you will need to purchase a registration key for each program.

http://www.icword.com/demo.html

http://www.icexcel.com/demo.html

Individually, icWord and icExcel cost US$19.95 each, but if you purchase both of them at the same time then you can purchase a bundle for US$29.95, saving US$10.00.

Panergy also offer discounts for site licences and volume purchases. They can also supply the applications on CD as well offering a "Publisher" licence for those who wish to distribute fully operational versions on commercial CD's.

http://www.icword.com/ordering.html

http://www.icexcel.com/ordering.html

PowerPoint Viewer

While Panergy don't have an application to view PowerPoint slide shows (yet), Microsoft themselves do have an utility that can be downloaded from the internet for free that enables users to display and print PowerPoint slide shows created in PowerPoint 2.0 for Windows or PowerPoint 3.0 for Macintosh or later. The PowerPoint viewer requires a PowerPC and System 7.5 or later, with 16megs of RAM. Like the Panergy products, the Microsoft PowerPoint viewer does not allow you to edit the documents - for that you still need the full PowerPoint application.

The download is 6.2Meg and can be downloaded from;

http://www.microsoft.com/MAC/download/OFFICE98/powerpoint98viewer.asp

Essential - For EVERY Macintosh owner!

In my opinion, EVERY Macintosh owner should also be the owner of both icWord and icExcel - Even those who own Microsoft Office! They allow quick and easy access to Word, Excel and AppleWorks documents, without huge system requirements, as well as providing conversion options.

I rate both icWord and icExcel a 9 out 10 and the only reason they lost one point is because at the time of writing this review, there weren't carbonized versions of icWord nor icExcel to run natively under Mac OS X. Hopefully this is something that Panergy will fix in the future!

I'd also love to see a PowerPoint viewer from them (to keep a consistent interface) as well as a Microsoft Publisher document viewer - both, of course, as carbonized applications.

Every Macintosh owner should also be the owner of both icWord and icExcel - Even those who own Microsoft Office!

UPDATE: Since originally writting this article, Panergy have updated their website to say they are working on Carbonized versions of icWord and icExcel

Credits

icWord and icExcel are trademarks of Panergy.

Microsoft, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

A copy of this article, with colour images, is available from my website, http://www.nicholaspyers.com.

Discussions about this article may also occur on the appropriate Australian Computer News Network (ACNN) mailing list(s). For more details, please visit http://www.zonian.net.au/lists.

Interested in reprinting this article? Any non-profit Apple Macintosh User Group (MUG) may re-print, free of charge, any of the articles written by Nicholas Pyers found at http://www.nicholaspyers.com/articles. There are just a couple of conditions, which basically boil down to letting us know - for the full terms and conditions, please visit http://www.nicholaspyers.com/reprints.

© December 2001, Nicholas Pyers