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Quick! What's the name of the software you use most often to write letters, send and receive email, do financial calculations, and all the rest?

If you're like 95% of people using personal computers, it's Microsoft Office. And if you're like 95% of those Microsoft Office users, you wish there were something better.

Well now there is.

Introducing Ashampoo Office Suite

Ashampoo Office is a professional-quality software suite that gives you all the most used, most important elements of Microsoft Office -- and all for barely a fifth of the price.

Stodgy or slender

The price itself would be a great deal, but in many ways Ashampoo Office is actually better than Microsoft Office. We'll run through some of those advantages later, but here's the big one:

Ashampoo Office is slim and efficient!

The basic edition of MS Office occupies a whopping 1.5GBs of computer storage, and sorting through all that code makes the program sluggish. Even if you install it choosing the most basic options, you are still looking at using hundreds of megabytes of code. Perhaps even more importantly, MS Office sucks up your computer's precious memory space, causing freezes, crashes and delays.

In contrast, the entire Ashampoo Office system takes up just 64MB. That's not 64MB of memory, that's 64MB of disk space! Believe me, that's as slimline as a sports car, and it performs just as well: it starts in the blink of an eye, is utterly reliable, handles smoothly and lets you concentrate on the task in hand. And just as people prefer driving their car to carrying out repairs, it's a genuine joy to spend more time actually creating and editing documents than shouting abuse at your monitor while you wait for a response.

Indeed, lightness of touch is Ashampoo Office 2008's greatest calling card -- full installation requires only 50MB. In the ultraportable era where users eschew bloatware, this can be no bad thing. ~ PCAdvisor

I know what you're thinking right now. You want to know what corners Ashampoo cut to get the program so slimmed down. Well, as far as everyday word processing, charting, spreadsheets, and presentations are concerned, I'm danged if I know! What's missing, of course, are the less-used programs like Access, Front Page, Outlook, Infopath, and Publisher. If you frequently turn to any of these programs, you'll be sorry it's not available in Ashampoo Office. But if you're like most users who never use some of these programs and only rarely use just one or two of them, then you can easily get along with third-party substitutes or simply fire up MS Office when you need one of those ancillary applications you find absolutely indispensable. If you're in the vast majority of PC users, Ashampoo Office will meet your needs just fine.

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As good as Microsoft Office... and in some ways better

The core features of Ashampoo Office will be very familiar to anyone who knows Microsoft Office. In fact, the entire "look and feel" of Ashampoo Office is designed to be extremely similar to Microsoft Office – any closer and Microsoft's lawyers would be on the phone! But seriously, if you're comfortable with any of the Microsoft Office programs, you'll feel right at home with the Ashampoo office equivalents: Textmaker, Planmaker and Presentations. Put simply, they give you everything you know and love from Microsofts Office's Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs, and that makes the learning curve as shallow as it can be.

One drawback you often find with alternatives to big name software is that the data files are either incompatible, or don't work as well as intended. With Ashampoo Office, this simply isn't a problem. Believe me, I tried my best to find a Microsoft Office file that didn't work well in Ashampoo Office, but I'm pleased to say I failed! All the Microsoft-format documents I opened and edited in Ashampoo Office could easily be saved and then opened again in MS Office, and there was no way to know anyone had worked on them with an alternative software package.

The most important thing is the fact that reading and writing in the original Word, Excel and PowerPoint files without losses of content or in terms of formatting presents no problem for the Ashampoo Office 2008. ~ Softsea.com

In the unlikely event of a particularly complicated document getting corrupted or losing data when you work on it in Ashampoo Office, there's a simple remedy. Every time you open a document in Ashampoo Office, the program makes an exact replica of the original file (which is automatically saved with the original filename but with a '.bak' suffix, making it easy to find). If anything goes wrong, you can always rename this replica file to the appropriate file ending (.doc, .xls, or .ppt) to recover the document as it was before you made any changes.

This happens every time you open a document, each time rewriting over the previous back-up file so there's no need to worry about your disk getting filled with multiple back-ups. Of course, this is also a fantastic lifeline if you make any changes to a document, save it with the original name instead of an updated file name, then change your mind – and let's be honest, this happens to most of us more times than we'd like to admit!

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New features for the 2009 edition

The newest version of Ashampoo Office now includes a PDF file maker, which is increasingly important these days. Anytime you're working in Ashampoo Office it's a straightforward matter to create an Adobe Acrobat PDF version of your current document – something even Microsoft Office can't do without third party add-on software. I was impressed by the ease of use and simplicity of this feature, particularly in comparison to the many standalone PDF creation programs I've tried, most of which either don't work properly or are available for only a limited trial unless you stump up a hefty fee.

The 2009 edition of Ashampoo Office offers full integration of the three programs, too. This means it's an absolute breeze to share information between them. For example, it's simple to insert a chart from Planmaker into a Textmaker document. Once you do this, changes you later make to the chart in Planmaker automatically show up in your word processing document, and clicking on the chart in your Textmaker document automatically opens it up in Planmaker for direct editing.

Power in your pocket

One of the most impressive features of Ashampoo Office is how easily you can copy the entire software package to a USB memory stick and run it on any machine without needing to go through a lengthy or cumbersome installation process. This will be extremely useful if you ever travel away from home and want to work on a borrowed computer in a friend's home, colleague's office, or cybercafé. The instant availability of Ashampoo Office on any compatible computer completely eliminates the problem of wanting to work on an office document when Microsoft Office isn't available and (for obvious security reasons) you aren't allowed to install programs on the borrowed machine.

Running Ashampoo Office directly from the USB stick works surprisingly well: it's a step slower than running a fully installed copy on your own machine (the slight delays are inevitable because of the slightly slower access time of a USB stick compared with a computer's own hard drive), but it's still eminently useable.

This feature is also extremely useful if you want to show a slideshow while visiting someone else and using their computer. With Presentations loaded onto your USB stick, you don't need your own laptop or require that PowerPoint or a similar program be installed on the other person's computer. As long as they can give you access to a Windows PC with a USB socket, you're good to go!

And here again, the extremely small size of the software comes into play. Since the package takes up just 64MB, even small capacity USB sticks will still have maximum room for your documents.

Ashampoo Office 2008 manages to combine user-friendliness, speed and stability in a reasonably priced package, making it is a genuinely feasible Microsoft Office alternative. ~ ComputerActive

The verdict is in

You have seen testimonials from professional publications throughout this review. But when I review software, I also check sites such as download.com to see if everyday users' feedback matches my conclusions and if there's anything I've missed.

Regarding Ashampoo Office, I was blown away. Of 38 reviews at download.com, 36 people rated this powerful software package either four or five stars (out of five). Believe me, given the way most people speak out only when they have something to complain about, that's an amazing response!

A great product deserves a great offer

Thanks to the great feedback we've had from Infopackets readers on our previous reviews of Ashampoo products, the firm has agreed to make available to our subscribers a special limited-time offer on its entire Office package.

Normally the package retails at $59.95, which, to be frank, is a bargain in itself. But until March 31, Infopackets readers can get it for just $34.95, a saving of more than 40%.

To take advantage of this offer – which will NOT be repeated once it expires – just click on the link below to buy today:

Click here to Purchase Now at the Reserved Price! ~ $59.95 value for only $34.95! ~ Save more than 40% ~ An Infopackets Exclusive!

Expires March 31, 2009

When you take advantage of this offer, you'll also qualify for discounts on some other Ashampoo products, including CoreTuner, which tunes up your PC to make sure it runs at full power – something that isn't possible in Windows without these tweaks.

And remember, you must follow our link to get the Ashampoo Office special price: you cannot get the 40% reduction if you go directly to the Ashampoo website.