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Sony To Package StarOffice On European PCs
Jahf writes "This News.com article talks about how Sony is adopting Sun's Star Office suite over Microsoft office in some areas. It's nice to see it being adopted, maybe this is the beginning of a trend. While Star Office is still not as optimized as it could be (read: it eats memory and can be a little slow even compared to MS Office), it has all the features most people need and then some at a much better price." Specifically, as reader Yacoubean points out (pointing to coverage at InfoWorld),"The PCs will be sold in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland."
Isn't bundling applications with an operating system and computer what got Microsoft in trouble in the first place? I hardly think a large multinational like Sony would be any more generous than the money-grubbers in Redmond. Beware.
--sdem
My American Vaio came with Corel Office.
Sony's been shipping stuff other than office for a long time.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I just recently got my dad one of those cheap walmart computers and installed redhat 8 and staroffice and he loves it! He only dabbles with writing a few letters but he really seems to get along fine. I think overall it is a little slow compared to Microsoft Office but it has a surprising number of features you wouldn't necessarily expect from a free software product.
Kudos to Sun and the StarOffice group for creating a true Microsoft Office killer.
Here's one to ponder... the article cites that PC makers are now less fearful of retribution from Microsoft for chosing other programs since the anti-trust settlement.
Could the anti-trust settlement, as weak as it is, actually be that effective? Is it really the reason the office suite market is going back up for grabs?
Ahhh, yes, the infamous MS Works--one of the oldest misnomers in the PC market :)
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
I believe that this is all a vile plot by Sony to eat into Microsoft's profit margins so that Microsoft must cut its losses on the Xbox and cede victory to Sony!
Any takers? heheheh.
I have to say that startup speed is probably the biggest issue I have with these programs. However, on a brand new PC with a 7200 RPM drive and GHz processor speed, it should flat out fly anyway. At my school we use Open/StarOffice almost exclusively. It's working out, but for the students with under 400 MHz laptops, it's nightmarish.
On a side note, does anyone here know why Microsoft's 'Word' can load in like, 2 seconds, and OpenOffice.org's 'Writer' takes about 10 times that? Does M$ do something special with the OS to facilitate faster loading for Office?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
they're enemies.
sony knows that office and windows are the cash cows for microsoft. sony knows that if microsoft starts hurting there, they can't afford to keep pissing money away on the xbox, sony's direct competition...
it's a street fight, and sony just kicked microsoft in the balls.
makes sense to me.
it'll be interesting to watch where it goes.. a new service pack kills sony dvd drivers? I have no clue.
either way I'll get some laughs out of the two slugging it out.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Sony isn't stupid.
:)
=========
MS reveals that Office is paying the rent while they lose money on Xbox... Sony thinks about the fees they're paying MS every year, as long as MS Office is part of their computer package..."...choto.... Tanaka-san...look at these numbers....why are we helping MS to keep the Xbox afloat?"
Sony has been subsidizing the Xbox, and now they have a way to halt that practice
Remember...investing in or doing business with MS is risking having your own money used against you in the marketplace.
My wife used to run Star Office and liked it better than M$. M$ Office is an ugly beast that writes hideous propriatory formated files. Star Office read those files, dispelling the bizare perception that M$ programers were some kinds of wizards. Other than that, my wife simply enjoyed Star Office's easy to use layout.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
But all that aside, you can't say "Linux is 2-5 times slower" based on the performance of OOo in Linux vs MS Word in Windows. MS Word is a really good programme, pure and simple; OOo suffers from terminal bloat and delusions of grandeur. Hell, MS Word under WINE starts up about three times faster than native Linux OOo ...
KDE and GNOME are bad examples too ... if you're looking for speed in a desktop environment, there's much better software out there! (try ROX for starters, together with a fast window manager like IceWM or Sawfish)
I've never used XP and so can't comment on its stability. But considering the extreme up-times I've experienced when running a linux box as a desktop computer (and web/file server at the same time) I'd be very surprised if XP is actually better. (IIRC the box crashed a total of three times in ten months continuous running, and we're talking RedHat 6.1 here, not Debian) In the last year of using Mandrake Linux (8.1, then 9.0) as a sole desktop OS, I cannot remember it crashing. Put simply, the underlying OS is very, very stable, and it's getting better, not worse. Now, granted XP may well be as stable, but I can't see how it can be noticably more so ... unless you're confusing OS stability with application stability, which is a completely different issue.
I think all the posters who are talking about the relationship between this and the fact that MS is competing with Sony with the X-BOX are just plain wrong.
If Sony was a well-run organization, its computer division would be making business decisions based on their own market rather than some vague spite because of some other divisions battles. There are several valid business reasons why offering a cheaper (to Sony) Office solution would make business sense.
MS is not going to run out of money any time soon - so suggesting that this is being done so MS stops spending money is just plain asinine. Rather, the very reason MS is investing in the XBOX is because they want to earn money in more diverse ways and if the Office business were to become less profitable, that would only encourage them to invest further into other markets in the hopes of being able to grow or maintain revenue.
It is possible that management asked the computer division to do this and use that as a threat to ask Microsoft to back off from the XBOX. However, that is arguably an antitrust violation similar to the one Microsoft got into trouble for since the PS2 is a virtual monopoly. However, I sincerely doubt that this is the case.
Mmmm.. Donuts
However, your zealotry is also devoid of factual content. With your cavalier attitude towards a contrary opinion, it will be hard to persuade people to try Linux or any other 'new' technology.
I'll ask you some of the same questions: What about Linux is more stable? Examples, please.
Yes, Linux is very fast on a command line - there's no UI loaded up. But comparing XP to RedHat's BlueCurve on my Athlon XP 1500+ w/ 512MB memory and GeForce 3 Ti500 - running the latest Detonator drivers in Windows, and the latest NVidia drivers in Linux - they're both pretty quick. Yeah, that's not "scientific" - but neither one is *appreciably* slower than the other. MS Office XP is fast. StarOffice is slower, however. Normal usage of the core OS is about the same.
In the early part of your comment, you made a sarcastic comment about "Yeah, all those cross-platform apps you tested." Please, post the information you've got about cross-platform applications.
Well, my Linux side does run the Codeweavers and Transgaming plugins - the plugin versions are fast enough to use, but they *do* slightly lag behind the Windows versions in their "native" environment.
Windows XP - with Windows certified drivers - is very stable. I've had ONE BSOD in 13 months - from a Beta Detonator driver. Since then, not one.
Zealotry will get us nowhere in the halls of Corporate America, the desktops of Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Joe Sixpack. It makes us look like little children who ignore reality because it's our favorite toy.
I like Linux as much as the next geek/wannabe-geek, but I'm objective enough to see where we need to go, not where we imagine we are.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Yes, Corel, the weather vane of IT industry (just follow the opposite direction).
Price comes first, and Corel is valued at cash value, if not even lower. They've got loads of software, WP Office (which luckily wasn't rebranded Corel XXXX to even destroy the brand too), CorelDraw, Micrografx line, Softquad line (HoTMetaL etc.) and who knows what else. And thanks to Corel they're all essentially valued at NIL. Use what is useful and spit out the rest for sale (most of which might even have a chance of success once out of Corel's clueless fingers) or open-sourcing.
Although Corel have tried their best to become totally irrelevant, they still continue to release PR that some journos read, or at least re-circulate. Currently that muscular PR machine is churning out, you guessed it, Micorsoft PR and their employees probably get fired just for mentioning Linux. Problem easily solved by Sun.
Sun knows how to sue monopolists instead of giving them discounted shares and even working for them for free (yes, you guessed who). If Java is worth $billion + damages, what about WordPerfect which was pummelled out of all channels (esp. preloads) by MS. Isn't MS-Office micorsoft's most valuable cash cow? Hit 'em where it hurts most.
And StarOffice... I'm sure there's something worth scavenging in WP Office that would benefit StarOffice. At least WP engineers used to be good at reverse-engineering MS-word filters. Migrating their remaining users out of micorsoft's sphere of influence would also be useful, as would phasing out the MS-windows-based no-revenue preloads that some OEMs use to avoid the full force of MS tax.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I've been wondering about all the slowness complaints that have plagued large applications like OpenOffice. Does anyone here do the hdparm tweaks to improve disk performance? I just stumbled across it (after 7 years) trying to improve mplayer's performance. This may take care of much of the slowness complaints we always seem to hear.
Intelligent Life on Earth
I think MS Works is far easier to use than Word, Excel, etc. My mother could figure out the word processor in Works - but Office is a bit too complex.
A simple, small, easy to use word processor that's geared at newbies is what Linux needs. Something that's not so intimidating as Office, something your mom could figure out, without having to ask you "What are all these things(icons) for?"
I wonder why MS hasn't put more effort into Works! That's a HUGE market - Office is the WRONG choice for 1st time computer users.
Hey how old is Star Office 5.2? Ancient! And while there are many people say it is all I need, FINE, that might be great for you but not for the rest.
I love *nix OSes. But Star Office on anything is dog slow and a nightmare to operate.
I was the Technology Director of a Small University and I purchased a load of new Dells(bout 1 year ago i think) Pentium 3 1.0 ghz. 256 megs of ram. I grabbed 40. We had 40 plain jane 233 mmx pentiums with 128 megs of ram and win 98. We only had liscenses for 40 copies of office 2000, so I smacked star office on the 233's. I had 40 machines that became dog slow, erratic, and crash prone. The ran office 2000 just fine. The productivity level for the students dropped abour 30%. I started keeping a log of the problems and they all pointed at star office. Locking the box up, not opening word files well. Whole slew of shit.
I tweaked and tweaked, and finally threw office back on the boxes and the liscensing be damned. Cause in this case office worked better, the students got into Acess, Excel, and kept on chugging.
On my new boxes I dual booted win 2000 and redhat. Taught classes in both. Taught Star Office and Office. And Office is a great product, yes it is bloated, but you can do *alot* in it. Star Office could not touch it. Office 97 runs better, doesnt eat the desktop and resources Alive.
I like Open Office, still see room for improvement. Loads better than Star. But saying Star is an Office Killer in this day and age that is ridicoulous.
Plus, in poor countries they learn to use what they have, the file server I replaces ran sco on a 1.0 gig scsi drive, 486 sx 25. They had done wonders with the box. Replaced it with Red 6.2 dual 1.0 p///s. Raid 3 on 36 gig scsis.(we got a good deal with dell).
We took a survey of 300 students. They liked linux, they wanted to learn linux, and we taught it. But hands down they voted star office out. They just couldnt be productive in their normal school work with star office.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
...and maybe not. I'll give you the benifit of the doubt and respond as if you are not troling.
/etc/hosts and /etc/hostname. Make sure those entries are correct before you whine about system speed. Also take time to do 'hdparm -Tt /dev/hd[x]' You should see data transfer numbers in the range of 20MB to 50MB. Also, under KDE, take time to optimize your video driver.
I have noticed that some linux distros are slow due to DHCP problems. I think emacs was the first text editor I ever saw that took time to look up the machine's FQDN and try to match what the DHCP server returned to entries in
It was taking like 3 minutes to start emacs and 5 minutes to start KDE. Other programs were also effected by the mismatched IP addresses. After I did a few tweaks (like 10 mnutes of work), emacs starts instantly and KDE is up in 10~20 seconds. Mozilla and OpenOffice are also very responsive.
AFAIRemember, Star office was really slow because it starts it's own desktop and loads a lot of drivers at startup. OpenOffice seems comprable to MS Office in startup speeds. But try to keep in mind that 90% of the programs you install under windows will add entries to the services tab of the MMC. This alows programs to start lightning fast because they are already mostly in memory.
Try this: On a fresh install of win2k/xp, look at 'msconfig' and the services list. Then install Office, Kazaa, Visio, Winamp, MusicMatch, etc... Then go back and look at the service list agian. Winamp and MusicMatch are very open about running in the background. Office and Kazaa use services to be sneaky. But don't be fooled, they are still running all the time. Slowly eating your memory.
To be fair, Mozilla and OpenOffice under Win32 use entries in 'msconfig' (i.e., your taskbar gets bigger) to speed up load times, but both programs tell you this at install time. They have to do this in order to have the appearance of speed comparable to MS IE and MS Office.
Oh, one more KDE tip: Make sure the 'fam' daemon is running before you start KDE. Somehow, the fam daemon indexes files needed by KDE in order to speed it up.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
When I was working at Circuit City about a year and a half ago, we had these, although only sort of bundled. The Sony rep stopped by, and along with his usual propoganda about various Sony features , he had a stack of Star Office CDs in slip cover-type cases with the Sun and Sony names printed on the outside (this was a pre-printed glossy cardboard slip, not some bootleg crap he rolled himself). It wasn't really bundled, per se, but he said, "when people ask you if they come with MS Office, you tell them they come with this." Right at that point I thought, "wow, that's a great idea. Way to go Sony. People really need to get used to the idea that they don't need to pay upwards of $400 for their basic word-processing and spreadsheet needs." Still, it never amazed me that in the face of Lotus SmartSuite and Star Office with different manufacturers (namely Toshiba and Sony), people still insisted on MS Office (even after we went to the trouble of saving various .doc and .xls files to a floppy and opening them with the other programs to show that you could indeed bring work home). Oh well, you can lead a horse to water...
I'm sorry, but you mention StarOffice 5.2. Sony is using StarOffice 6.0, which is as recent as Open Office, and uses the same base set of features.
"Linux is 2-5 times slower (usually closer to 3) on the same machine"
Bullshit. Slower running what? All of those crossplatform apps you tested.
He was probably saying "StarOffice is slower than Microsoft office."
This is a fact. I personally prefer OpenOffice/StarOffice because of it's lack of "I know more than the user" policy, but there is no denying that Microsoft Office is hands down faster at starting and at certain time consuming tasks, like complex scripts and searching large text files. It seems you agree with this statement.
(Honestly I don't think a few seconds loading time makes much difference, but that's me)
"I've tried KDE and Gnome, several versions, and multiple distros. Slow. Very slow"
No more than XP on that same machine. You want all the eye candy there is a price to pay. Of course you can run XFCE and other lean apps, but why bother with real facts?
Linux newbie from Windows:
"This window manager (Blackbox, XFCE, IceWM, etc) sucks! I want something perty like Windows (and with a decent interface and consistant applications)."
Linux guru: "Use GNOME2 or KDE3! They are what you want! They even have more options and power than Windows!"
Linux newbie: "This is great but man is it slow! I was hoping for something faster than Windows. I want something at least as fast!"
Linux guru: "Use Blackbox or XFCE (etc)! They are what you want! They are even faster than Windows 95, nevermind XP!"
Ad infinitum.
"Linux was more stable than Windows 98. It's less so compared to XP in my experience."
Again Bullshit. What is less stable? Oh right why give facts when you can just make things up.
I can't speak for Windows XP, which I hate with a passion, but Windows 2000's applications and GUI are definitely more stable than GNOME2 or KDE3. No question. As far as overall system stability, Linux almost never crashes. Almost. Windows 2000 crashes for me about every other month, usually due to Creative's infamous soundcard drivers.
I would know. I have been working for weeks setting up and tweaking a Linux server to serve Xwindows applications to remote terminals. GNOME2 crashes frequently, but usually only when logging off or running Nautilus. I'd say about twice a weak on light use. KDE3 itself has never crashed for me, but Konqueror and its help system have done so three times each so far, and Konquer has simply frozen once in addition to that. Of course, it is only fair to mention that Internet Explorer seems to me far less stable (but a better actual browser) than Konqueror, but then I use Mozilla on all platforms but OpenVMS, so that doesn't much matter to me.
Fluxbox is stable but simple, and a recent update made it suddenly decide to:
1) Place items in the slit in a large grey box on the lower-right corner of the screen rather than at the top as configured, but ONLY when running remotely over the X protocol
2) Not work at all (GSOD) over TightVNC.
Those complaints about Xbox itself don't really count though, because running a separate user session remotely isn['t even an option with Windows (less the expensive and flaky as hell Terminal Server setup)
That said, Linux desktops crash at least ten times more often for me than Windows 2000 does (which is integrated with its GUI, so when it crashed the whole thing goes down). That is to say, both rarely crash, but Linux GUIS noticeably more. I have tried custom compiling everything with conservative flags with no effect.
You critique the original posters lack of evidence when you yourself offer nothing but that critique. It would probably be best to offer counterevidence rather thanjust be argumentative.
Again WTF is wrong with the mods these days? This was pure trolling.
I was wondering the same thing, but for different posts.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I totally disagree. OpenOffice is horrendously slow compared to Office 97/2K/XP on all my hardware from the trusty P-120 with 48MB up to P4-1.6 w/512MB. Hell, it's not even in the same class. KOffice is closer to MS Office performance, but lacks those precious 'features.'
Of course, what do I care? UltraEdit + a web browser does everything I need.
that as long as people can get a hold of office cd's, they will install it, because to them it is "free". and m$ knew this, and knows it. the sad truth is that for all their bitching about piracy, it helped them. and they knew it, and laughed all the to the bank. i know that for instance, although my school gets office for $50 a box, it is not available to teachers' personal computers for that price. you think the office97 install cd's haven't made the rounds 1-2 thousand times. ha. think again.
the big test will come when new version of windows no longer runs office97/2k.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
.. majorly in the PC-business. As it is, Microsoft is trying to take over the console-business, something Sony is not prepared to see happen. At the same time Sony is putting lots and lots of dollars into Microsofts warchest by selling PCs with Microsoft Windows preinstalled.
Sony is not alone here, IBM is another company in a similiar situation.
I think it would be in both companies interest to subsidize development of Linux desktop systems.
Your linked document doesn't spin it that way, but that's what it means.
To clarify, here's a quote from the FTC that spells things out more directly:
-ZipwowI don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.