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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?)
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?