In the early days of PCs, people shopped around for business software. Wordperfect 5.1, Lotus 1-2-3, Foxpro database and Harvard Graphics - all Dos pack leaders - would set you back well over £1,000 in 1992.

And, as each had a different interface, you'd be facing a formidable learning experience.

With the rise of the graphical user interface (GUI), it became inevitable that all-in-one packages or 'suites', offering word processing, spreadsheets, database management and business graphics, would catch on.

Some of these, such as the truly dreadful CA Simply Business and the brilliantly quirky Claris Works have fallen by the wayside. But three of the big names - Wordperfect, Lotus and Microsoft - have survived, as has the more modest Ability. The relative upstarts Star Office and Thinkfree join them in this group test.

You can pay anything from under £50 to over £400 for an office suite, and never before have we seen such astounding value at the bottom end of the range. It's also refreshing to see some alternative thinking: we have one suite based on open-source architecture and another written entirely in Java.

There are 6 packages in our group test, read on to find out which is the best for you.

Ability office
Corel Wordperfect Office 11
Lotus Smartsuite
Microsoft Office Professional 2003
Sun Star Office 7
Thinkfree Office 2.2

Editor's Choice

Download a table of features relating to all the products in our group test here. (256KB). You will need Acrobat Reader 5.0 or above, in order to view the table. Download Adobe Acrobat Reader here.

More group tests:
Firewalls
Laser Printers
Linux