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

Slightly Offtopic, I know

[DrPascal]

Which Toshiba? I have the 5005-S504, which is a 1.1GHz, 512MB laptop. How does Mandrake fare on it (have you installed it on there yet?). I run Mandrake 8.1 on my desktop at home, but my laptop runs XP Pro for now. Any results?

More on the Star Office Mandrake Club

[Fizzlewhiff]

This link over at CNet talks about the Mandrake Club members feeling jilted.

Basically Mandrake is offering the download to the Silver members of the club. Those who joined under a lower level because "members would receive the same benefits" feel this is unfair, as they should.

ontopic IMO, since I mentioned it ;)

[timothy]

it's a Satellite 1005-S157, the cheap-oh model :)

It has 256 megs of RAM, 1.06GHz celeron, NiCD battery (oh well), 15GB hard drive (eh, I can't complain much, my hard drives are all mostly empty anyhow).

For 900 bucks (800 after mail-in rebate), I am pretty pleased with it, but the Linux aspect is the only sticky thing -- the chipset in here is the i830M. That means it's supported in XF86 4.2, but not earlier. I'd like to do a clean Mandrake install, though, and since I want 8.2 anyhow, I'm downloading that. Rather, I started the download at my dad's place 30 miles from here on his cable modem ;) Try explaning even to a retired engineer where to find the 2nd and 3rd ISOs after he's closed the browser sometime! I'll be back there later in the week to grab the other ISOs and burn the CDs.

I'm told that this model works great under 8.2, though. Should, anyhow -- XF86 is the hangup with 8.1, which otherwise goes on fine. Lovely unless you want to use the GIMP, KWord, etc.

Cheers,

timothy

Re:And it does PDF too

[Nailer]

This is off topic, but I really appreciate your sig, its very informative. Keep it around for a whle :)