Slashdot Mirror
Review: Sun StarOffice 7
ValourX writes "Here's the Internet's first comprehensive review of Sun's new StarOffice 7 suite. With the ability to export to PDF and SWF and greatly improved conversion filters, Sun's $80 office suite is more than a match for the upcoming ultra-expensive Microsoft Office System 2003."
But OOo only costs $0.00.
;)
Seriously, I use Windows and OOo, and there isn't anything I can't do with them as far as I know. I've never been like "Damn! If I only I was using Word!" Now I know there are probably a few features Word has that OOo doesn't, but chances are, Ability and Star Office don't have them either.
By the way, spell checked with OOo!
**Prepares for anti-OOo flames**
The reviewer accepts when he cant do things (like test how fast it actually starts up compared to earlier verions), looks at the important stuff etc /. crowd would find interesting
My favorite is this one though, the author shows that he looks in places which only the
The license agreement is rather odd. A part of Sun's legalese (which also appears in the Solaris license) stipulates that StarOffice 7 is not intended for use in (or by those contracted by) a nuclear facility.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
As much as I'd love to use SO (or, insert other non-MS product here), the unfortunate reality is most business applications my company uses (and our clients as well) that sit on the desktop require Office. It simply isn't enough to say "This can open & save Word / Excel / etc. documents." A true replacement needs to support MS plugins, VBA (ugh, but sorry, its needed), and so on before we can even consider it. Unfortunately, as absurd as MS pricing is, its an all-or-nothing battle too, the cost to support each additional Office Suite is just too high for a midsized (500-1000 user) shop. We've tried talking to dozens of vendors just to get a timeline on this sort of thing, and with the occasional exception of a few that are porting apps to Java, most aren't even considering it, simply because of the costs they would incur for what appears to be a small market. Unfortunately, I know its a chicken & egg situation: My company can't switch until a good number of our business apps support non-MS software, but... well, this is slashdot, you know the rest.
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
I don't understand why people are so hung up on the no PIM issue. Aside from glaring security issues, Outlook is a very usable PIM, but I rarely (if ever) notice/use/desire its integration with the other MS-Office programs (in fact, it's ridiculously annoying that it wastes the memory to load word as its default editor of e-mail messages). I am perfectly happy using my PIM as a standalone piece of software (eg. Evolution) and not having to tolerate an entire (annoying) office suite just to have a PIM. Besides, so much integration and interoperability is being done on the OS level that it should not be necessary to buy all the programs you need as a suite for them to work well together.
On the font topic, this has plagued linux in general for a long time and is not exclusive to StarOffice, though it is (slowly) improving.
Look for the words "Linux Port".
Click there.
Notice it uses Wine.
Port, huh?
[Said with XXX-rated cigar in hand:]
I guess it all depends on what your definition of "port" is.
Would you *reallY* like normal users installing MySql and postgresql on their machines with the easiest to use options (read:insecure options) by default? Using Berkely db or adabas is much more sane.