Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Office 2000 is better
Microsoft is still successfully putting out their fabulous Office suite. Office 2000 was the perfect piece of software. In my experience, it was reasonably stable, had great options, and ran efficiently. I couldn't imagine anything else that needed to be added. Unfortunately, Office XP is a lot slower and just doesn't have such a polished feel to it like 2000 does. It feels overly bogged down with unnecessary graphics (especially on the menus) and is a lot slower than 2000.Sure, its still a good product and I only give it 2 stars by comparison to 2000. There is absolutely no reason to upgrade! Don't get tricked by Microsoft. If you are buying Office for the first time, see if you can find a copy of 2000 somewhere.
Rating:  - If you can and must upgrade, then purchase this version.
In the interests of full disclosure, my thanks to Microsoft for providing me with a subscription copy of Office XP. I wouldn't own XP if I had to pay for it.The new features in XP, be they useful (like better document recovery), bearable (like the activation procedure), or merely easily disabled (like task panes), simply do not provide a compelling reason for most users to upgrade. This software costs slightly less than my first car did... would that I could spend that kind of money on non-essentials! So who should upgrade? I would say that group consists mostly of large businesses looking to take advantage of XP's new collaboration features and owners of Office 97 Small Business Edition who would like one of the applications not contained in that package. And why this version? Because it contains EVERYTHING, including a very cool mouse, and it's only available for a limited time. In parting, shame on Microsoft for continuing their trend of ridiculously understated and actually steep system requirements. You really do need a new system (P-3/Athlon, 128MB RAM, and a 17" monitor) to get the most from this software - given the wide install base of 64MB Celerons with 15-inch screens, this is a travesty. Linux anyone?
Rating: - Great upgrade
I have been using the Office XP Beta for several months. The icons highlight better, the task panes are very helpful, especially in PowerPoint, and the applications run snappier, although a speedy PC always helps.The most interesting feature with the largest potential is Smart Tags. Many are built into the applications, and they allow the user access to many commands right at the point of need as opposed to having to use the menus. As more people develop Smart Tags, they will be available for downloads and installation on any PC. With the capability of Smart Tags, almost any feature or function whether local or over the Internet can be implemented. Many previously custom developed applications can now be implemented with small amounts of Visual Basic code implemented as Smart Tags. Smart Tags can even be implemented in Internet Explorer with Microsoft free Web Components. The two negative features. One is on-line registration which will limit flexibility in where Office XP is installed. The second is the fact the Outlook 2002 will not allow emails containing exe, vbs, or 11 other extensions to be read. These attachments are held by Outlook and not available to the receiving user to stop the spread of viruses. There should be a way to override this, but the release version allows no override.
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