Sizing Up StarOffice 6.0

Over on NewsForge, Roblimo has taken a look at Sun's new StarOffice 6.0 (due out in April for retail purchase), and comparing it to OpenOffice build 641C. I installed StarOffice on a new Toshiba laptop, and since my Mandrake 8.2 ISOs are still trickling in, have StarOffice 6.0 running instead under Windows XP. (I have just a few additional notes on this, below.)

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.

Comments

What about this bug?

[Da Schmiz]

As near as I can tell, the latest public build of OpenOffice still doesn't have this bug fixed. Since I need to be able to edit MSWord files fairly often, this makes it more or less unusable for me.

So, for the time being, I'm using MSWord2k in VMware. If SO/OO can reproduce most of the functionality I need (which, for the most part, it does... I was using SO6b happily until I discovered articles going to print with typos because Word's spellchecker ignored them) then I'll happily switch.

For me, the only substantial difference between SO6 and OO641C (last time I checked) was fonts... SO6 came bundled with a few extra fonts that made it easier to interact with MSWord users. If that's the only major difference, I'm happy to use OO and rip my own fonts...

Sarcasm??

[thesolo]

From the article:

Sorry, there are no Smart Tags in StarOffice. If your company decides to use StarOffice instead of Microsoft Office, this is a feature you'll have to learn to live without.

Is this sarcasm, or is Roblimo actually implying that Smart Tags are a good thing??

In a comparison between MS Office, this should be a huge +5 for Sun. Smart tags are idiotic and intrusive, and should not be supported in Open/Star Office ever!

Re:This is not a review.

[Ravagin]

Okay, I agree with you.

Maybe two months ago, my laptop's win2k partition started getting scuzzy, and I decided it was time to reformat and reinstall (needed to repartition for WinMe (only for ie6, i swear) anyway). Before, I had had MS office, installed on a workplace license from the summer. but I didn't have access to that any more, so I decided to go with some form of StarOffice.

5.2 was not desirable, so i ended up with the latest OpenOffice. I haven't looked back. The word processor is slick and responsive (128MB, 833mHz piii) and uses the formats I need. The powerpoint analog (forget the name; i use it rarely) served very well when a family member needed a laptop for a powerpoint (as in a .ppt file) presentation.

I don't usually use many Office apps these days besides word processing, but when it comes to word processing, the latest OO is excellent. The only problem I've encountered- and I remember this from MS Word - is when pasting content from MS IE. OO makes it a bizarre formatted content block, but i'm used to filtering clipboard text through notepad. Heh, it's even replicated the ms word annoyances.

So. OO word processing rocks. Nothing missing, that I've found.

Re:Office and Photoshop

[Billly Gates]

This guy is probably a troll but I will take the bait anyway.

"Linux is not totally mainstream yet, because:

A) No adobe photoshop yet. GIMP is inferior, don't even try..
B) StarOffice is very slow, and not 100% compatible with MSOffice. Microsoft word is still the preferred word processor and such.

"

With A.) I have to say that adobe photoshop is not a mainstream app. Its expensive and only photo designers and a few web site designers use it. Not on pc's but mainly macs.


B) StarOffice is very slow,...
Star office 6 is alot faster and much of the bloat has been removed. I have never ran it but one of my friends has. He told me its alot better and almost 3 times as fast and is comparable to office97 and has better file compatibility. Version 5.2 on my pentiumIII700 runs ok anyway.
"and not 100% compatible with MSOffice". Well about an hour ago a just imported some old excel spreadsheets into Starcalc and I had no problems at all with the imports. Not to mention my resume which was originally written in word2000 went through fine in staroffice 5.2. I only had one document which ever exhibbited some errors.

"Microsoft word is still the preferred word processor and such" This is mostly true in regards to mindshare until microsoft began heavily doubling and even trippling the licensing costs of Office and now is also trying to monthy charge the usage of Office with its upcomming .net my services and hailstorm. I expect a real change in the consumer market for star office if ms ever tries anything like this in the consumer market. I hope their stupid enough to do it. The corporate market will follow if they don't have to ms office to read office documents anymore. This is the reason why word is prefered and not because its better. People use it out of fear there boss would email a word doc and expect an anwser from them right away. If they know they use star office they might use an alternative format and then microsofts arguement could be lost.

Linux is not totally mainstream yet. Your right. That was never quite the goal of linux and it probably never will be. Linus himself admitted he would quit out of principal if it ever caught more then a third of the market.

Re:641C is nice

[cavemanf16]

I too like the Open Office 641 release very much. Although I have seen some really goofy conversion between OO and MSWord2k when using tables in a Word document.

OO runs nearly as quickly on Windows once you get it up and going, although because it's Java, some of the menu's and other 'buttons' are sluggish to respond.

But Mandrake 8.2 - WOW! Open Office 641 is included as an installable component in the 3 CD ISO set that you can download for free, and it is quick! Once loaded in KDE 2.2.2, it just seems to fly - faster than MS Word on my particular machine (dual-boot Win2k/Mandrake8.2 AMD Duron @986MHz and 256MB 133SDRAM). Given the cross-platform compatibility, I'm going to be using OO at home from here on out for all of my 'Office' needs.

Now I know not all of you have a good broadband connection to download Mandrake 8.2, but it's definitely a stable improvement upon the 8.1 release.

Now the only hurdle left is convincing people that don't play complex DirectX video games that Linux does everything for them and more when properly configured (which took me only 2 hours - Win2k took 4hrs BTW, and I've been using it longer than Linux).

I hate to sound like a buzzworthy press release, but I've been messing around with Linux long enough to see how annoying it can be. Fortunately, I finally have found a Linux desktop I can recommend to my non-computer literate friends. (And if I buy the gaming version, maybe I can convert my fiancee to Linux, OO, and The Sims on Linux ;) ).