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Sizing Up StarOffice 6.0

Posted by timothy on from the words-and-white-space dept.

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.

3 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. I was hoping to try it by asv108 · · Score: -1, Redundant

    As a member of the Mandrake Club, I was hoping to try out Star Office, but since I'm only a standard member, I will have to stick to open office for my Linux office needs.

  2. Well... by Teknogeek · · Score: -1, Redundant

    I'm glad to hear they're getting rid of the monolithic desktop...it was the most annoying thing about StarOffice 5.2.

    Too bad they're charging for it now, though...it was great for not having to use MS Office.

    Ah, well...might as well give OpenOffice a look-see.

    --
    I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
  3. Where's the beef? by doja · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Did I miss something? Is that it?

    Seriously, on the monolithic desktop aspect: if they got rid of that MDI interface, that would make the tool WAY better.