With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 and the radical UI changes brought with the new ribbon interface, it looks like there's an opening for competition in the office productivity space to gain some ground against the Redmond giant. Corel, owners of the WordPerfect suite is jumping into the fray with both feet this week with the release of the beta version of their flagship word processor.
The WordPerfect Lightning beta is free to download and offers a new degree of online services and integration not seen in previous versions of the office suite. It also represents Corel's continued efforts to move their products towards a modular component setup with applications designed to work better in an online environment.
Lightning offers online document storage and retrieval, making it easier for users to collaborate over the Internet. Even if you're a die-hard MS Office fan, since it's freely available, Lightning is worth at least downloading and checking out.
