Word 6 heralds new era of automation: provides full support for OLE 2.0. (Microsoft Corp.'s Word for Windows 6.0 word processing software, Object Linking and Embedding 2.0) (Software Review) (First Look) (Evaluation)

Microsoft Corp.'s Word for Windows, Version 6.0 marks a new era of custom application development. Word and tools like it will be involved in more business process automation in the next five years than Cobol has since its invention by Grace Hopper.

I'll convince the skeptics in a minute.

Microsoft showed Word 6.0 for the first time last week and will include it in Office 4.0 to ship next month. (See story, page 3.)

On a less grand note, Word 6.0 is also good news for users of other Microsoft productivity applications. Word 6.0 is the first of a new generation of applications for Windows, Windows NT, and the Macintosh. Fortunately, the effort Microsoft has put into usability testing pays off big time in Word 6.0's user interface (UI) enhancements. Other Microsoft programs will adopt the same basic set of top-level menus, movable tool bars, and other UI features.

And Word 6.0 is a terrific word processor, too.

So, even if your goal is as simple as saving …