Serif Pageplus - good or not?

[pete]

We use Publisher here. Anyone who has to administer a network with Publisher files now knows why I'm asking about Pageplus.

We're getting evaluation copies of the whole suite, but while they arrive...

1) Does Pageplus have sensible file sizes? (Publisher can use 50->100MB for a single page)
2) Sales bloke says apps and patches install happily via .msi / group policy - I saw a thread on here about silent installers being broken?
3) Do the kids pick it up reasonably quickly?
4) Does it work well with a locked-down (no local saving) network?

The other main selling point students can buy single programs from the suite for £10 or £40 for the lot - far cheaper than getting MS Publisher.

[Geoff]

Also consider Scribus.

http://www.scribus.net/

[djm968]

Bit of a pain in a locked down environment I found a few reg changes were required. MSI I used was fine which cannot be said for DrawPlus which was a complete pain in the a$*e.

[wesleyw]

Yeah Movieplus can have probs as well but then again the software once working is very user friendly and the pageplus files are surprisingly small which is a <insert deity>send especially if they need to print

It should default to the user default my documents location so I wouldn't have thought there should be any problems with local lock down I suppose it depends on how or if you've go redirected user folders?


Wes

[djm968]

The issues I had with a locked environment were to do with the colour pallet which tried to change some reg keys values to point to %USERPROFILE%. As a work around, I scripted the reg keys changes to point to the serif app data folder of the all users profile.

Saving files was not an issue with folder redirection.

[riedquat]

No problems with PagePlus here, if you order a Multi-user licence agreement, you get a nice little paper setup guide with instructions for RM CC3, vanilla Windows and 'Older' networks. The multi-user version also comes with the ability to pre-register the software with a site-wide registration code elimitating the need to telephone for an unlock code for each copy.

And the best thing about PagePlus?.....Native support for saving, loading and directly editing PDF files :-)

[crc-ict]

Just hope their commercial sales division is different to the retail one...

I dealt with Serif for some software for personal use at home a few years back and found that they pestered the life out of me afterwards. Repeated phone calls, lots of junk mail, and an annoying system where you have to phone them for activation codes, but then get a hard-sell session at the same time.

The way it worked was they'd write and offer you a package cheaply. It would usually be the previous version, then they'd spend the next six months trying to sell you the upgrade!

[russdev]

so how do you open pdfs in pageplus then ??

Russ

[riedquat]

erm, in PagePlus 11, simply File -> Open (change the filter type to *.pdf), or from the open publication wizard use the filter drop-down (top right corner) to show pdf files.

[russdev]

arrr got version 10 but how well does it open etc as maybe be able to buy it with some elcs

Russ

[pete]

Ok, thanks for all the replies..

Received parcel the size of a small child yesterday afternoon with two of everything in. So far I haven't sworn at it any more than I would usually or felt the need to claw out my eyeballs after 15 minutes. I like it - it's simple to pick up, has enough resources thrown in and gets more complicated if you need it.

I've given copies to teachers with emphasis on "we need to replace publisher with this". We're leaning strongly towards OO instead of MS Office here, and this fills the publisher gap.

@Geoff
I've looked at (and use) Scribus myself, but (compared to the polish of OpenOffice vs MS Office) it's no match for Pageplus 11.

@Russdev
I fiddled with editing a few .pdfs and converting stuff to .pdfs and didn't see any formatting errors / munged colours. Everything I tested them in handled them fine. That's good enough for me.