Obtaining WPS Office Professional

[RichardC]

I’ve been trying to obtain an English copy of the Chinese office suite WPS Office 2007. The free Personal edition available for download from the Kingsoft site supports simplified Chinese only, however the Professional edition has English language support. Unfortunately I can't find out how to get the 180 day trial of the Professional edition version and can’t find it for sale anywhere.

I’m floundering around the Kingsoft site with Google Translate and am not making much progress in finding out how to obtain the Professional edition so I was hoping a Chinese speaker may be able to help me. Could you tell me where I can get the 180 day trail version of WPS Office 2007 Professional? If not does anybody know where I can purchase WPS Office 2007 Professional from?

Thanks for the help

[RichardC]

For a piece of software with 15million users WPS Office it’s surprisingly difficult to obtain. I suspect Kingsoft are only selling it in China because they’re terrified of Microsoft’s legal team. If you download the free Personal edition you’ll find it is pretty much exactly the same as Microsoft Office 2003. Given the similarities, the fact that WPS Office is probably a fraction of the price of MS Office and the fact that users would require no retraining to switch from MS Office it’s likely that Microsoft’s legal team would be all over Kingsoft if they released in the West. Microsoft doesn’t like its monopoly being threatened since it could force them to lower their obscene prices.

I did try emailing Kingsoft to ask how you get the Professional edition but never got a response so I was hoping someone who speaks Chinese might be able to find out how to obtain it from the Chinese language site. I’m surprised more people on this forum aren’t using WPS Office but there’s only one post related to it in the whole forum and that’s just a link to the free Personal version. It looks like my only option might be to learn Chinese and start using the Personal edition. While it would be a hassle it would still be better than using Open Office

[jukebox]

Try going to their English site for help.

http://en.kingsoft.com/office.htm

Their email adress is stated as communications@kingsoft.com.

Regarding to its sales of English version, it's probably merely restricted to Viet Nam, as far as I know.

I once downloaded the English version of WPS which was leaked onto the web, however, I never managed to finish updating online.

[RichardC]

Thanks for the reply. I did email Kingsoft’s English email but never got a reply and there's ver little information on their English site. I managed to find the version circulating the web but only the Windows release seems to be available and not the Linux version.

It’s a great piece of software and looking at the Japanese site it sells for 4000yen there which is very reasonable. I just hope they do an official release in the west so I can get the Linux version. In the mean time it looks like I’ll have to put up with Open Office.

[jukebox]

I finally found their website in Vienamese from their partner (as I think)

http://phanmem.dec.vn/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=23

I tried it and the interface and document of it is fully traslated into English though it's labled as Vienamese.

It's not difficult to find the download link to free personal edition or tiral professional edition.

The Vienamese version is something out-of-date (newer than the leaked one)and you can't make use of features like PDF support or Equation 3.0 in Vietnamese personal edition (as you do in Chinese personal edition).

BTW, the Linux edition of it is actually with WINE wrapped.

[RichardC]

Excellent. Thanks a lot for the link. I hate using pirated software so I uninstalled the leaked version but now that I have a legitimate version I’ll probably keep using it. The updates work in this version and it successfully downloaded the latest patch.

The lack of the on-the-fly spellchecker is a bit of a pain and it has a few bugs (coloured borders don’t work in Kingsoft Spreadsheets and they always come out black) but overall it’s great, especially compared to Open Office.

Thanks for letting me know about the Linux version. The Wikipedia entry says there’s a Linux version but it was probably written after seeing these screenshots:

http://blog.9zi.com/post/1/931

I’ll just run it through WINE – it’ll still probably run a lot faster than Open Office

Thanks again.

[RobWood]

Hi.. Thank you all for your interest in Kingsoft Office 2007 English version.

I can tell you that an English version has now been officially released, as is our new internationally acclaimed security product Internet Security 9, both of which are available for download free at http://www.kingsoftresearch.com We now have a detailed plan to develop this product in tandem with its Chinese counterpart where the English version is updated directly from servers in the US and Australia allowing for quicker updates and better support platforms.

Over the following months we have many new services and functions that will be implemented in order to provide a greater level of functionality and we look forward to your feedback should you be kind enough to provide it.

Thanks guys, If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me at intouch@kingsoftresearch.com

[Luobot]

A few questions:

Does it also support MS Word Macros (VBA, Visual Basic for Applications)?

Does it come with some adware/spyware goodies ... or ... What is the business model for offering this product for free?

[RobWood]

Yes, Kingsoft Office supports word macros.

Yes, A full compliment of malware/spyware and portable media protection makes up the Internet Security 9 suite.

Additionally Kingsoft Internet security 9 ,sits upon the Trusted Authentication model, which as well as the traditional heuristic and scanning apporach, provides realtime analysis of processes and currently active files based upon a community server.. You can opt into this functionality for an increased level of protection.

Pricing? good question. At present we are looking at ways in which we can provide our software utilising a diiferent approach to traditional payment options.

Until this time, Kingsoft Office is a 6 month license renewable via request and Kingsoft Internet Security is an open ended free trial.

Hope this helps.

[imron]

What happens after 6 months if you don't renew your subscription? Does it just stop working?

I'll stick with OpenOffice thanks.

[RobWood]

Glad your enjoying OpenOffice.org.

At present we will be providing keys to extend the product if necessary.

We are hoping to offer it as a free version.

[RichardC]

That’s great news about the English edition. I’ve continued to use Kingsoft Office 2007 every day and it’s great. It opens all MS Office files perfectly and it offers all the functionality of MS Office that I actually use. It’s almost completely bug free and the only problem I’ve found is the coloured borders in Spreadsheets – you have to select the colour before the border type and if you select the colour after the boarder type it comes out black. That’s an extremely minor issue though.

Feature wise it has pretty much all the features of MS Office that I use. The only two things I’ve found missing are a lack of on the fly spellchecker in Writer (presumably because it’s been target at the Chinese market until now and hopefully it’ll be added soon) and the lack of a Window->Split option in Spreadsheets.

I tried a lot of Office suits in a search for an alternative to MS Office and have found Kingsoft Office to be by far the best, with the best MS Office compatibility, by far the fewest bugs and the best feature set.

I’m looking forward to switching to the English version but unfortunately the download link isn’t working at the moment.

[RobWood]

Whoops, Sorry. Small download dilemma.. Should be okay to download now. Please try the link again.

[RichardC]

Thanks a lot, it's working now. I've installed it and everything is great. It's fantastic how it is and with only the fly spell checking and a split view in Spreadsheets it would be perfect.

This is the border issue I was talking about:

http://i27.tinypic.com/293zwu8.gif

It's an extremely minor problem but it seems I naturally select the border type first and then the colour and in that order it doesn't work so it took me a long time to work out how to get coloured borders.

Thanks again for fixing the link.