[wakey]

While I'm hardly Microsoft's biggest fan the bashing they are getting for office here is a little unfair.

First we have Word where we have people going "They would be better off learning a DTP". A DTP is a program that when your producing documents where layout is king and relies heverly on 'artwork' is essential as it gives you the felxability and freedom to be creative that word processors like Word simply dont allow. This flexability and freedom though is simply surplus to requirements for most peoples needs. Things like writting letters, essays, producing CV's ect ect do not the power of a DTP. And yes a DTP will generally be able to pretend to be a word processor and produce your Word Processor documents adequately but its just not set out to really be at home as one.

Then we have the Access debate. Yes Access does have a limited audience in the real world, for the kind of basic lists that the average user needs Excel does the job fine and for the big company databases running across networks then SQL Server, Oracle and such like are alot more powerful and useful but when it comes to bridging product its immense. If you require a relational database that will run on a local machine to store a large amount of data it really cant be beat. While not being word level of Install and use its not too hard to get to grips with and produce a low level relational database and it has enough power to be expanded on as needs grow thus allowing the databases life to be expanded as the needs grow. Yes you will eventually hit a point where your needs are such that you will really have to be looking at something better but for most people they will never reach this level.

As a teaching tool Access as others have said is alot easier to introduce database design concepts than most other applications, the entry level is fairly low which makes it quick and easy to get into and start putting what you have been told into practice. I also think personally its a good way of getting people to be happy using the database frontends that they will come across when working, when you have done some form design and validating of fields when it comes to using a frontend to enter data you cant help but feel more at home than you would have otherwise. In truth I cant help feel that TK is failing his students by not teaching them when to use a database over an excel worksheet and by clearly never giving them the chance to put the theory into practice. As for the most wont ever use it after the course argument, lets be honest most of whats taught in schools wont ever be used after the course, it doesnt however make it useless and not worth teaching. Some people on the course will use it directly while others will find the knowledge is used indirectly.

As for Outlook, from a home pov its not that much use as an application as most people will just use it for email but as others have said when you couple it with an exchange server in a business its a powerful tool

Of all the main apps I have to say Ive always hated Powerpoint the most, its not really any worse than any other presentation application and presentation applications are useful especially in business but theres just something about it that always has me feeling im stuck in the 80's when using it.

On the whole the Office suite is imho a great collection of software, the price is and always has been an issue and with things like Open Office and Google Docs you have good free alternatives but they just arent near the Microsoft level yet. No doubt the gap will close, after all Microsoft have Decades lead in development of these products over the rivals and the competition will be good for everyone but if you can jusitify paying the money Office will imho be the perfered choice for a few more years atleast