A builder who uses a computer almost needs a hard hat to protect himself from the falling price of software. That's especially true if you buy one of the new product "suites" being offered by several major software developers. A suite is a group of applications — usually a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and personal scheduling program — that is sold as a package at a huge discount from the purchase price of the individual applications. Although suites are available from Lotus and Novell, I chose to look at Microsoft Office because I think it has the best integration between elements — at least at the moment. The theory behind any software suite, however, is the same
