Microsoft Works Suite 2005 is designed to fill the gap in the home that Office fills in the workplace, by offering a program for a variety of tasks. It contains Word XP, Money, AutoRoute 2005, Encarta 2005, Works 8 and Photo Premium 10, which covers most bases of home computing.

The Works Task Launcher is the best place to start. It has shortcuts for all the programs in Works Suite and shows all of your upcoming appointments in a calendar. Here, you can also view your address book and quickly compose emails by clicking on a small icon next to their name, although you can't send the same email to a group of contacts.

The Works Launcher will also ask what kind of task you want to achieve and then start the appropriate application. So, if you want to organise a fantasy football league, it will fire up the spreadsheet program rather than the word processor. There are dozens of these pre-set templates, some of which take you to the MSN website for further help if you have an internet connection.

The Projects section contains more advanced templates for tasks such as coaching a sports team or moving house. The spreadsheet and database applications may be basic versions of their Office cousins but are still powerful enough for some advanced tasks. Given how complicated Access is to use, home users will probably achieve far more with Works Database because of its simplistic approach.

Microsoft Money is a very powerful program and is capable of giving you complete control over your finances. Most banks offer a statement download service that Money can directly access, which saves you the hassle of copying transactions. Regular bills can also be set up to synchronise with Money.

AutoRoute 2005 covers western Europe with accurate details of roads and places of interest, while Photo Premium lets you organise the photos on your computer and fix basic flaws.

This could be the best £110 you spend on software for your home computer and it is much cheaper than buying each program individually.

Contact: Microsoft 0870 60 10 100
www.microsoft.com/uk

Also consider: Ability Office Professional 4