Lots of nuggets, and a couple nasty bits in Office XP.(Chicago Tribune)

This short review (and the longer column that accompanies it) only scratches the surface of the newly introduced Office XP. But first impressions matter a lot, and at first blush Office XP looks like a big winner with some nasty bits scattered among the nuggets.

The first nasty bit is a rude and draconian copy protection scheme that forces each buyer to register identification numbers for a computer when installing the software. This gives Microsoft an ironclad guarantee that only two machines will run with each purchased copy (a bow to the practice of using the same software for the buyer's home computer and laptop). Efforts to load the software on more than two …