Users Swarm to StarOffice 6 Beta [Free Microsoft Alternative from powerhouse company Sun]

eWEEK ^ | Peter Galli

[Texas_Longhorn]

The brouhaha surrounding Microsoft Corp.'s new volume licensing plans has apparently been good news for companies like Sun Microsystems Inc., which last week announced the beta release of its free StarOffice 6 office productivity suite.

Iyer Venkatesan, the product line manager for StarOffice, told eWEEK in an interview Tuesday that there had been more than 200,000 downloads of the software from Sun's Web site over the past week. Some two-thirds of those downloading the software had indicated on the download page that they were Windows users, he said.

[ThePythonicCow]

I hope StarOffice does well. I would like to point out that the beta was published October 5, 2001, this eWeek article was dated October 10, 2001, and that this beta will automatically disable itself on March 31, 2002. So about 2 of the 6 months of the shelf life of the download is gone already. It is a smallish download, however.

Also, if you are coming from StarOffice 5.2, don't uninstall it while trying the 6.0 beta, or as explained in the README you will loose your custom settings when you go to the final 6.0 bits.

For more reviews of StarOffice 6.0 beta, search on Google.com for "staroffice 6.0 beta".

[Tennessee_Bob]

Go with 2000 Pro.

[ThePythonicCow]

Enough already of this "does too; does not" debate.

I'm sure I could find a Sun marketing person who could compose a list of features, and check off that StarOffice has every feature in the MicroSoft products.

And I'm sure that I could find a MicroSoft expert who could point out details supported in their products not available in the StarOffice product.

And there's no way to maintain perfect compatibility with MicroSoft products - they are too overloaded with creaping features and constant change. Not even MicroSoft maintains perfect compatibility from version to version.

I don't know about this StarOffice version yet, but in any other non-MicroSoft word processor I've tried that reads Word *.doc format files, they're good, but not perfect -- mess up the formatting enough and only Word will display it exactly as intended.

[absalom01]

All that i miss is the smooth (anti-aliased?) fonts of Microsoft.

My thoughts exactly. The 5.2 version is perfectly adequate for home use, and I've been able to use it with complete interchangability with MS Word at the office, but it's still not quite ready displace Windows on the desktop, in my humble opinion. It's getting a lot closer, though.

[LuvItOrLeaveIt]

I recommend Staroffice to people running small businesses. It's a good way to cut software costs.

[Texas_Longhorn]

So wonder you seem so sensitive to StarOffice

[Knitebane]

You need the patch . It greatly improves the filters, stability and speed of StarOffice 5.2 for Linux. Or you can go get the StarOffice 6 Beta. It's very stable, quite a bit faster and doesn't use that icky desktop. By default it opens the word processor and you can open the other modules from there.

And it's still free.

Knitebane

[Paleo Conservative]

What are the differences between StarOffice and Microsoft Office?

[freedomcrusader]

Does StarOffice have anything like Outlook, which manages contacts, email, calendar, and to-do all in one place? And is there a Palm conduit to StarOffice?

Without those, I couldn't possibly switch.

[Texas_Longhorn]

Yes,yes,yes,yes, and yes

[freedomcrusader]

So does StarOffice come with the Palm conduit, or is that avilable from somewhere/someone else?

[wattsmag2]

I use Wordperfect too. Alt-F3 is great.

[FastCoyote]

The Differences between Star Office and Microsoft Office? You don't have a freakin highway-to-hell virus chute running through the middle of Star Office. Oh, and it's free.

[ThePythonicCow]

I'm skeptical that Texas_Longhorn is right, freedomcrusader.

I use neither Outlook (with Exchange and all that), nor do I use StarOffice. But everything I've seen in the last hour poking around says that StarOffice is missing Outlook and Exchange integration. See for example a this Slashdot thread on StarOffice 6.0 beta.

[daviddennis]

But what percentage of the features of those progrsms do most people use?

When I tried an older version of StarOffice, it looked and felt so much like Microsoft Office it was eerie.

In fact, that's what I hated about it - I wanted something a little more original.

D

(For the record, I write documents in raw HTML on a Linux or MacOS X system and use the web browser to print them out. Why? I've lost too much data with Microsoft Office products, and I haven't lost a single byte in emacs with at least 1000x more text involved.).

[Texas_Longhorn]

Sorry, I was talking about 5.2 It has the full integration.

[_Jim]

My choice/what I use ...

Fast. Compatible. Free.

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The suite is composed of four full-featured applications: a word processor, spreadsheet, graphics editor and digital photo organizer

602Text is a powerful word processor compatible with Microsoft® Word (.DOC 9x/2000/XP) and many other document file types.

602Tab is a Microsoft® Excel (.XLS 9x/2000/XP) compatible spreadsheet with over 150 available functions.

http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/

[daviddennis]

I loathe Windows with a passion due to extremely bad early experiences with it, but I cheerfully admit XP is loads better than crash-a-minute 98. If you insist on using Windows (instead of MacOS or Linux), you should upgrade to either 2000 or XP. 2000 gives you freedom from that tiresome product activation, while XP gives you limited game compatibility and some mostly useless extra features wrapped up in a prettier but skin deep interface.

D

[daviddennis]

Try MacOS X. It has the most stunning anti-aliased fonts in all computing.

D