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No-Cost StarOffice Licensing for Institutions

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the coming-soon dept.

eugene ts wong writes: "A while ago Sun announced that it was giving unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education. Well, it turns out that they announced that they are giving unlimited no-cost licenses for all education and research institutions." Many college students now get drastic discounts on Microsoft Office - but this covers a much broader range, from kindergarten up.

2 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by moonbender · · Score: 5, Informative
    StarOffice has some features that were left out of OpenOffice because they rely on proprietary code.
    This is the part of the official FAQ pertaining to this:
    Q. What are the differences between StarOffice 6.0 software and the OpenOffice.org 1.0?

    A. StarOffice 6.0 softwre is a commercial product aimed at organizations and consumers while OpenOffice.org 1.0 is aimed at users of free software, independent developers and the open source community. StarOffice includes licensed-in, third-party technology such as:

    Spellchecker and thesaurus
    Database component (Software AG Adabas D).
    Select fonts including Windows metrically equivalent fonts and Asian language fonts
    Select filters, including WordPerfect filters and Asian word processor filters
    Integration of additional templates and extensive clipart gallery

    In addition to product differences, StarOffice offers:

    Updates/upgrades on CD
    Sun installation and user documentation
    24x7 Web based support for enterprises and consumers
    Help desk support
    Warranties and indemnification guarantee Training
    Professional services for migration and deployment

    For more information on components and services available for the OpenOffice.org product, visit http://www.openoffice.org site.
    The main difference is probably the thesaurus and the database. OpenOffice has its own free spellchecker, don't know if it's as good or better than the proprietary one.
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  2. Try it, you'll like it. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Informative


    If you haven't tried Star Office or Open Office, try Open Office. It's free. It's excellent. Of the free word processors, it seems to be the best.

    I've had a lot of problems with Microsoft Word being quirky. Sometimes Microsoft Word will move a footer to the top of the following page, for example. I don't have a huge amount of experience with Open Office, version 1.0 was released on May 1, I think, but it doesn't seem quirky.