WhiteSmoke 2009 General Writing Version review

Verdict:

Review Date: 21 May 2009

Price when reviewed: £56

Reviewed By: Adam Banks

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

More usefully, the built-in dictionary and thesaurus provides definitions, examples and synonyms for English words and can translate them into 17 other languages. Our review copy insisted on American spellings; a British dictionary is available, but users must contact tech support to activate it, which seems unnecessary. It also costs an extra £28, which brings us to WhiteSmoke's biggest problem: its pricing.

Annoyingly, the garish website announces the 'last day' of a '75% off sale' no matter what day it is. When you unravel the price table you find that the reductions apply only when you buy multiple modules, such as Business and Creative Writing, increasing the total cost beyond the basic £56. These additions to the dictionary, thesaurus and text enrichments make sense for options such as Bio-Medical, but we'd have expected Business and Creative Writing to come as standard.

If you use a text editor that lacks its own spelling and grammar checkers, WhiteSmoke isn't a bad addition, and it works pretty well. As an adjunct to Word, it's less essential, although it does go further in some respects. Either way, it's expensive and falls well short of ensuring broken grammar gets fixed. Next month we'll look at a cheaper rival, RightWriter.

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