Most of our online courses deal with Microsoft products, such as Word, Excel, Access, and so on. There has been very little fundamental change with these products over the past few versions. Indeed, Microsoft usually makes a few minor enhancements, changes the interface slightly, and releases an upgrade every 18 to 24 months. The basic program is the same. Microsoft Word 2000, for example, hasn't changed much since Word 95 was released.

Currently, we are using Microsoft Office 2000 and/or Office XP (2002) for all of our online videos with Word, Excel, Access, FrontPage, Outlook, and PowerPoint. These programs work well. They have been on the market for years, and we are comfortable recommending them to our clients. We always tell our clients to wait until a program has been on the shelves for up to a year before upgrading. Let someone else discover the bugs. Therefore, we don't always jump right on the latest versions available.

Most of the features in our Basic (100) and Intermediate (200) level courses will be almost exactly the same whether you are using Office 95, 97, 2000, XP, or 2003. We try to mention differences where possible in the videos. In our classroom-based courses, we have been using Office 2000 and XP since they were released, and we have had students take our courses who use Office 95, 97, and even 2003 - with no difficulties.

For Microsoft Windows, we are currently providing most of our material based on Windows 98 and Windows XP, however the material is very similar to Windows 95, Me, and 2003.