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I expected problems from my attempt to rid myself of the paper in my life. What I didn't expect was this complication from my wailing 4-year-old son, Levi:

"Daddy, why did you recycle all my pictures?"

Even though he raised that question in a half-asleep moment in the middle of the night last week, Levi's anxiety illustrated one big complication about the idea of going paperless.

In short, some physical objects have value that doesn't easily transfer to the bits of their electronic representation. There's a great divide between the physical and the virtual. … Read more

ActMask Document Converter CE is an easy-to-use conversion program that allows users to quickly turn documents into PDFs and JPEGs. It provides options for the more advanced user but is simple enough for everyone to use.

The program's interface is fairly intuitive, although we found that the large portion of it that's devoted to advertising other ActMask products was cluttered and distracting. Users can convert either individual documents or batches of them, and these two functions are helpfully organized with tabs. In general the program is self-explanatory, which is good, as the built-in Help file does not go … Read more

Good news comes to the iPhone workforce on Thursday, in the form of an update to Quickoffice Mobile Suite. The latest version will now create and edit the Word and Excel documents native to Microsoft Office 2007 on Windows, and Microsoft Office 2008 on Mac. Prior versions did not support these DOCX and XLSX formats.

The change brings Quickoffice Mobile Suite ahead of its most threatening productivity rival in terms of editing support. Neither of the two Documents To Go applications for iPhone can create Excel documents; their capability is view-only. However, for some people, creating spreadsheets is overkill. For … Read more

When it comes to faithfully viewing and rendering a Microsoft Office or iWork document on your iPhone or iPod Touch, Documents To Go quickly proves its competence It delivers crisp, clear reproductions of your Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Excel documents, even Microsoft Office 2007 files. Even better, mobile workers can create, edit, save, and e-mail Microsoft Word documents. However, until Documents To Go also engenders spreadsheet creation and editing, it will remain an incomplete business tool.

In addition to the iPhone app, Documents To Go gives you the option of downloading a free companion desktop application that syncs files and … Read more

When it comes to faithfully viewing and rendering a Microsoft Office or an iWork document on your iPhone or iPod Touch, Documents To Go quickly proves its competence by delivering crisp, clear reproductions of your Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Excel documents. We love being able to create, edit, save, and send Microsoft Word documents with the application's formatting tools--including Apple's cross-app copy/paste, font and paragraph style, and lists, among others. However, until Documents To Go also engenders creation and editing powers for Excel documents, it will remain an incomplete business tool.

Advanced business professionals using this "… Read more

Able2Doc PDF to Word Converter basically does one thing very well--it converts PDF files into Word or Open Office Writer documents so that you can use and manage them in Microsoft Word, the OpenOffice.org open-source program, or a compatible word processor. It also saves files in both DOC and RTF formats.

The program has advantages beyond doing away with a PDF reader and standardizing your documents and files, such as preserving the look and feel of PDF files in your Word documents. It offers several conversion options, including the ability to convert .PDFs into fillable Word forms, to place … Read more

Free Word/Doc Txt to Image Jpg/Jpeg Bmp Tiff Png, in spite of its atrocious name, is a simple program that allows users to convert text documents into images. The program is easy to use, but some users may be frustrated by its lack of options.

The program's interface is fairly sleek and attractive. Users add the files that they want to convert--Word, text, and RTF files are supported--and select which kind of image output they desire. The program includes nine output options, including JPEG, GIF, and BMP. The documents are converted with the click of a button … Read more

PDF Annotator is a powerful program that allows users to make a variety of different kinds of notes on PDF documents. The program's many features and intuitive interface make it a great choice. We wish we'd had it when we were in grad school!

The program's interface will be familiar to users of Microsoft Office products. Nearly all of PDF Annotator's features are accessed through the program's customizable toolbars. Although it may not be immediately obvious what all the little buttons do, a few minutes of playing around with the program makes most functions clear. … Read more

PDF UNdo is a simple program that allows users to convert PDF files into Word, text, or Rich Text Format documents. Although the program does not have a lot of features, it's easy to use and does a good job of converting documents.

The program's interface is basic and similar to that of Microsoft Office programs. Large buttons give users access to all of the program's features. Two frames to the left of the interface display the contents of the user's computer in a tree format, allowing users to find and open PDFs, but this seems … Read more