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Sizing Up StarOffice 6.0
The installation was dead simple, and therefore better than most software: I popped in the CD, and with about 10 minutes of point-click-whirrring, the software was installed. The only notable aspect of this process is that the CD included (and popped onto my hard drive, with prompting) a new Java runtime environment (Sun's standard JRE, version 1.3.1). The helpful timer that accompanies the install is conservative, which is nice -- it started out estimating 14 minutes for the "transferring files" portion, but quickly dropped down to less than five.
Having not touched StarOffice for a while, it's nice to see the features in OpenOffice trickle in -- most importantly, getting rid of the monolithic desktop makes it actually usable to those of us who hate screen-hijacking software. And at least on this 1 GHz, 256MB laptop, even "bloatware" features like auto-correction are snappy enough not to be bothersome.
Two small notes on Roblimo's review for anyone curious about using SO under Windows: The Windows version does claim to open "WordPerfect (Win) 6.0-7.0" documents, which is at least a start toward WordPerfect compatibility. And under Windows, the nice X-Window style one-click text transfer isn't an option. One more note for 6.0 Beta testers: you can download a patch from Sun to extend the life of the beta from March 31 to June 3 2002.
This is an anecdote about installing it. There was no mention of how it handles Office200/XP document importing and exporting. There was no mention on how stable it was. There was no mention of how well it integrates with the KDE or Gnome desktops, cut and paste, drag and drop. There was no mention on how it's usability has evolved.
There are MUCH bigger issues with Start Office than does it install quickly or does it hog the screen. How about, can it gracefully replace MS Office for a MS Office user and if not why not?
The big three apps are Outlook, IE, and Office. We have Evolution, Mozilla and ???? A contender for the missing piece of the desktop puzzle deserves a better review than this.
In a stunning upset, a Linux user that never uses MS Office thinks that OpenOffice is perfectly adequate.
That never happens. Certainly not on Slashdot.
Gimme some reviews from people whose opinions actually matter and you'll start changing mindshare. Articles like this are just preaching to the choir.
(And if you're going to compare StarOffice and OpenOffice, at least a rudimentary review of the additional features that come with StarOffice would be beneficial. Like, instead of just mentioning the database features are there, how about saying if they're any good?)
A) GIMP is not supposed to be a drop-in replacement for Photoshop, although it can do some stuff Photoshop can do without taking up huge amounts of memory.
B) StarOffice is not supposed to be 100% compatible. The actual shift which needs to take place is towards an open document format which everybody supports. RTF bloats a little bit too much to fit in there, there are loads of others, but anyway, progress is being made. If only I could make corporate policy force RTF or something, anything instead of MS .doc format (which changes with every bloody office release anyway).
I too am gutted that StarOffice 6 will be a pay-for app, but Sun have to justify development costs sooner or later. At the end of the day, most companies do not object to paying for Office software, and it has to be good. You don't get rid of Microsoft forced Office dominance overnight. Most of my clients think Office comes with Windows, and are shocked to find out they don't have Word when they boot a brand new machine. Wankers.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Cost to Join Mandrake Club at Silver Level to download StarOffice 6: $120.00
Cost to upgrade initial membership to Silver Level to get StarOffice 6: $60.00
Cost of a copy of StarOffice 6, Deluxe Version with documentation from local retailer: $40.00
And I should join or upgrade my membership why?
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Because you want to support Mandrake? If it was all about StarOffice, it would be called "Buy StarOffice from the Mandrake store" not "Join Mandrake Club"
sic transit gloria mundi
The biggest surprise for me was that Sun will be selling this software for $49 or $99 per seat. This could be the legitimatization of Linux software. When someone can charge money successfully for a widely used peice of software, it will seem much more legit to many businesses and consumers, expecially if the quality is there too. I was waiting to dl it for free, but now I will be purchasing it when it's available and telling some of my contacts about it.
Here's keeping our fingers crossed that this is successfull. Of course, there are plenty of free/free alternatives for those who choose them.
Why is this important? My wife depends upon a grammar checking program. On average, it brings up her score on term papers by a letter grade. The only product with a grammar checker for Linux is WordPerfect. I purchased a copy of Corel Office 2000 and installed it under Mandrake 8.1, but it is extremely unstable (sometimes it silently crashes, allowing her to enter text but saving only empty files). Since Corel sold their Linux OS division, they also nuked their online Linux help for Corel Office (which seems to be a violation of their EULA, since they still own the Office for Linux division, but that's another story). The only place this help exists is in Google's cached pages. I would purchase Star Office if it had a grammar checking program.
Has anybody heard a rumor about plans for a grammar checking program in the next version of Star Office? Does anybody have any hints on making WordPerfect 9 more stable under Mandrake 8.x? Is it worth the money to upgrade to WordPerfect 10? Does anybody know of a stable word processor with a grammar checker for Linux?
Well, if you wanna see Mandrake alive and kicking in the future, that's why. They need some cold hard cash to keep their shop running.
For many small businesses the retail price is the only price that matters, and for large businesses that are interested in StarOffice Sun would almost certainly offer substantial incentives as well. Heck, for those users that don't need database capability you could even use OpenOffice, which is free software. This would allow you to get some of your less sophisticated users off of the upgrade treadmill altogether. Multiply that out over a few upgrade cycles and the switch to StarOffice makes a lot more sense.
Not to mention the fact that StarOffice would allow you to ditch some of your clunky PC clients altogether. StarOffice would allow you to migrate from maintaining expensive PC clients to X terminals. Instead of hundreds of client PCs to administer and maintain you could have one server, and hundreds of X terminals. One commodity Intel server running Linux will happily support hundreds of users, and this sort of configuration is much less expensive to maintain. The clients are essentially disposable, and all configuration can be done on one centralized machine. The fact that Microsoft is changing the way that it charges for MS Office so that it is essentially twice as expensive in the average case makes the switch even more tempting.
Most importantly switching to StarOffice greatly reduces a company's dependence on Microsoft, in a relatively painless way. Since StarOffice is available for Windows you can continue to use your existing software, and since StarOffice is mostly compatible with MS Office you don't have to worry about starting over from scratch with your important documents. Some of your most experienced MS Office users would need training, but StarOffice's user interface is similar enough to MS Office that most users won't hardly notice the switch. Microsoft has already proven that they have no compunctions against raising their prices, and they have a history of forcing their hand on their customers. While it is certainly true that Sun might attempt something similar, the fact that OpenOffice is available under the GPL makes it much harder for Sun to abuse its StarOffice customers.
The cost of switching didn't save WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, and it isn't going to save Microsoft Office either.
thought: is it better to "warn" people that OO might make things look a little funny, and then be able to discuss how capable your _very_ inexpensive OpenOffice product is...
...or is it better to never even tell them, because they probably will never realize that your formatting problem wasn't just a problem with MS Office...
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Ms-word can read other things besides .doc.
Have you tried .RTF?
Perhaps if people were not so dependent on grammer checkers, their grammer would be improve, thus breaking their dependence on them.
...as we have been since the beginning of school in September.
I work at an all-girls boarding school. We have a number of international students here and almost every girl this year brought her own computer with her.
Installed on these computers is every version of MS Office ever made, Wordperfect, Lotus, DOS stuff, sometimes not even a word processor! In addition, many of these versions of software are of international origin.
Solution? For us the choice was simple. We switched from MS Office to OpenOffice.Org in all the classrooms, our dorm terminal server, and installed it on every student computer.
The education price isn't all that much for MS Office, but we couldn't afford to put a copy on every student and teacher computer as well as having enough licenses for the dorm server. We had just purchased 30 new teacher computers and would have needed over 100 licenses for the dorm terminal server.
Initial reaction to this wasn't all that popular, especially amongst the teachers. But I put it this way: I asked them which one would be willing to give up his or her job so we could afford to pay for enough MS Office licenses?
Since I had no takers, I told them that I felt like Microsoft really didn't need our money - WE DO. To sweeten the process, I gave every teacher a copy of OOo at orientation to install at home and get familiar with it. The plan worked great.
We still get the occasional grumble, but it IS hard to argue with free and NONE of us liked the alternative.
This has unified our Office software and we don't violate any laws by giving out copies of it. It is perfectly usable and every new version of OOo has really improved it's stability/usability.
It is our intention to go to StarOffice 6 when it is released, but we'll see what the education terms are (probably free or near free).
What I think this project could use is a 'skins' feature. It probably wouldn't do for OOo to release a version that looks EXACTLY like MS Office, but I could see a hacker doing it just for fun.
It could certainly be a way of sneaking this in through the back door of almost every institution.
If there is any one area I'd like to see work done after stability/usability issues are resolved, it would be the UI. But again, different doesn't necessarily mean inferior. Try the 'Draw' program (which supports OpenGL objects!) to see what I mean.
Anyway, glad to see OOo and Star get some well deserved press. I wish I would see more comments from people actually using this on a daily basis (as I do), but I imagine that by this time next year I will.
Sincerely,
Chuck Hunnefield
admin@NOSPAM.lindenhall.org
Linden Hall School for Girls
Lititz, PA, USA
"Start doing the impossible..."