Is StarOffice Ready To Take On Office?

A reader writes "CNET has an article about: Is StarOffice ready to take on MS Office? A quote: "Bottom line for Sun and StarOffice: If you keep aiming where Microsoft has already been, then your opportunities will be in China. A better tactic is to take aim at where the IT market is going to be and your opportunities will be much wider.""

Comments

I don't know about all this, but

[WhiteWolf666]

I have been using Star Office for awhile, after I dumped Office 2000.

I'm sorry to say, I actually like it. I have even encouraged people to install it.

Yes, it may not have all of Office 2000's functionality, but it is close, and there are several benefits.

1. It's free(as in beer, but not as in speech (read on, however).
2. It's cross-platform. There are linux binaries (and solaris, I believe) on sun's website. This may just be the office suite of choice for linux (at least beginning linux users) users, as it does not require much to get it working.
3. 6.0 looks really sweet.
Plus, come one, people. It has 98% the functionality of office 2000. That is good enough for at least 75% of people out there, because most people don't use the bloated features avaliable in office. Yes, you have to do things slightly differently. But generally, whatever you wanted to do in office, can be done in staroffice.
While my third point is kind of irrelevant (it makes me hopeful, though), I think the first two are serious advantages that IBM/Lotus/Corel don't have. Sure, you could get Corel's Java Wordperfect, but it kind of sucked, and it didn't have all the features of star office, and the full version cost money.

Finally, StarOffice is forming the core of OpenOffice, which has (IMHO) the potential to become fantastic. In fact, the first full featured beta is avaliable, I may just switch.

As it is, however, even if StarOffice falls off the face of the earth, methink the project is a success. There are a substantial number of users (maybe not compared to Office 2000, but a fair number nevertheless), it's free as in beer, it forms the core of an office suite that is free as in speech, and is cross-platform.