Software maker Corel announced a new version Monday of its WordPerfect office software, marketing the package as a low-cost alternative to Microsoft Office for consumers and small businesses ...

WordPerfect was subsequently taken over by Novell and then the word processor was sold to Ottawa-based Corel in 1996.

But WordPerfect Office X5 remains a tough sell for general business users who are reasonably satisfied with Microsoft's core Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, or their free Web counterparts.

The word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications are compatible with Microsoft’s competing products Word, Excel and PowerPoint, according to Corel, which claims that WordPerfect ...

Corel released a free public beta of WordPerfect Lightning on Tuesday, a word processor that blends a desktop-based application with online collaboration and storage features.