Office 2003 reviewed

E-mail fans (or slaves) will be delighted to learn that Microsoft Outlook has received a sensational and far-reaching overhaul. But among the big three - Word, Excel and PowerPoint - you'll find only a new, blue color scheme and a few other choice changes.

Over the years, Microsoft's flagship e-mail-calendar program had become the well-deserved butt of jokes, frustration and spite. Because it is ubiquitous in the corporate world, Outlook became a helpless, football-field-size target for virus writers. And because it offered no protection against junk mail, it invited more spam than a canned-meats convention.

If someone sends you an IRM-protected document and you don't have Office 2003, meanwhile, you can't open it at all. (Microsoft says it will make a free viewer program available for the ingrates who don't upgrade immediately. This viewer is, however, for Windows only - IRM breaks some of the convenient Windows-Macintosh file compatibility that's existed for years - and it requires Internet Explorer as your browser.)

The basic Word-Excel-PowerPoint suite costs $450, or $280 to upgrade from an older version of Office (or even Microsoft Works). For just one program, Microsoft charges $230, or $110 for the upgrade. (There's no upgrade price for Outlook, however. It's $110 for newcomers and loyal, long-suffering fans alike. Clearly, Microsoft hopes to exploit the fact that everyone will want it.)

Speaking of payment, by the way, Office 2003 requires a PC running Windows 2000 or Windows XP. If you're among the millions of people with an earlier version of Windows, you had better factor a Windows upgrade into the price - and therefore maybe a new computer. Monopolies have their privileges.