Microsoft’s radical redesign promises ‘better results, faster’. Be fully prepared for this world-leading productivity software.

Climb the steps all the way to Windows guru status with our invaluable selection of tips and shortcuts for XP and Vista.

If you are serious about converting paper documents to editable text then this is the way to go. A decade ago it would have cost close to $50,000 for a system that allowed you to rapidly scan multiple paper documents into editable, searchable and archivable electronic documents. Today it can be done for less than $1300 and the cost of a scanner with an automatic document feeder.

Useful for the very basics, but it’s early days for Google’s latest venture.

An advanced Windows Documents menu.

Tagging is the best system for managing files ever conceived. David Kidd wonders what Google is so afraid of.

Test & validate your web code

Test & validate your web code

Your photos, music and data are just a virus or hard disk failure away from oblivion. Build a triple-layer defence using PC Authority's practical guide.

With its cosmetically enhanced menus and toolbars, Word 2003 is now smoother and prettier, but the bulk of Microsoft's efforts are hidden under the surface. There are a quite a number of enhancements that will appeal to everyone, but the majority of Word's new features are aimed at the corporate market, with support for XML, Smart documents and IRM (Information Rights Management).

A great choice for offices that need to recognise batches of documents, with its only real weakness being poor automatic zoning on complex documents.

Analyze and scrub hidden and potentially embarassing data in Word documents. With Doc Scrubber yo...

Not many new features, but the new interface breathes fresh life into an already great product.

Useful new features and a total interface overhaul make this the best Office ever.

Complete office suite for your Palm

Create professional PDF documents

Convert PDF documents to HTML format (for the Web). Although electronic documents created with Adob...

Share your printer over the Internet

Cheap to buy and run, the X5470 is great for mono printing, but less so for photos and images.

Optical character recognition (OCR) software has been around for a long time and OmniPage from ScanSoft is often touted as the market leader in this space.