An Early Look at StarOffice 8

polar_bear` writes "NewsForge has an early review of Sun's StarOffice 8, set to be released in mid-October. From the article: 'StarOffice 8 is not perfect, but it is an excellent value for businesses that do not depend on proprietary Microsoft formats for production work.'" And yes, for the uninitiated, NewsForge is still owned by the same parent company as Slashdot.

Comments

OpenOffice

[kevin_conaway]

From the article, StarOffice is based on the OpenOffice.org source code, and is very much like OpenOffice.org 2.0, with a few enhancements

I thought OpenOffice was originally based on StarOffice?

What is based on what?

[GenKreton]

"StarOffice is based on the OpenOffice.org source code, and is very much like OpenOffice.org 2.0, with a few enhancements:"

Not to be overly-pedantic, but isn't OOo based On StarOffice...?

From the article...

[gardyloo]

StarOffice developers claim better Microsoft Office compatibility with every new release, but like all programs that are not Microsoft Word, Writer will never convert every single document perfectly.

      Hm. So is the writer implying that Word perfectly converts every single WORD document? Because that's totally orthogonal to my experience.

Re:(Slightly O/T) OpenOffice

[TheRaven64]

I suspect that the problem is not so much Linux-isms as SysV-isms. Star Office is primarily supported on Solaris and Linux (and Windows, but that's irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion). Solaris is a direct SysV derivative, and Linux has strong SysV leanings. OpenBSD, obviously, comes from the BSD family. If the code were really full of Linux-isms then it would not be easy to run on Solaris, which was the reason Sun bought it in the first place.

Re:Parent companies

[gclef]

If they don't mention the ownership ties between them, then /. gets accused of conflicts of interest in posting OSTG stories. It's effectively a financial disclosure statement: Yes, we might have a conflict of interest here...take this with your own-sized grain of salt.

Learning StarOffice is Hard

[fragmentate]

We tried the "open source initiative" here.

StarOffice, although complete, is too different from MS Office. It's not that people can't use StarOffice as efficiently as they can use MS Office...they simply do not want to. It was difficult to get anyone to take it seriously. Even though every single feature of MS-Office that they actually use is in there, they were hell-bent on refusing to use it because of the features StarOffice lacks that they never use.

Talk about stifling oneself.

Re:Learning StarOffice is Hard

[swordgeek]

What you're saying is really a universal truth: Something new and unknown is harder to use than something old and familiar. Or more succinctly, people are lazy. If you give people the option, they will virtually NEVER switch to something new, even if it has significant (but not compelling to them) advantages. That's why MS won the browser wars by bundling IE into the OS, even though it's been a piece of shite most of its life. Ditto for MS Media Player and Outbreak--both utter excrement.

Why categorized as Linux?

[southpolesammy]

Surely, Sun will offer SO8 for Solaris, Windows, and Linux, and although the article referenced is a review of the new product on Linux, this seems misaligned.

Perhaps the article should have considered a broader perspective of the new application than on a single platform.

Re:Orthogonal

[Anonymous Coward]

His experiences with Microsoft Word conversion are mutually exclusive of the experiences described in the parent post. Yes, a bit of a stretch grammatically, but not SO bad.

Too much Sun Java stuff in StarOffice now

[Animats]

In this new release, the installer is in Java. And apparently only some versions of Java work. Guess whose.

Each new version of StarOffice seems to have more dependencies on Sun's Java. This is not good for OpenOffice.

It's not Java, per se, that's the problem. It's the dependency of open source software on closed source software, the evil that Stallman always warns about. You don't want someone to be in a position where they can cut off your air supply.

Full Disclosure

[ran-o-matic]

Since NewsForge and Slashdot are owned by the same entity (OSTG), some people might think there is reporting bias. Disclosure helps keep reporters honest.

Start Office vs MS Office

[CDPatten]

I know I'm going to get slapped with troll, but I am seriously "what did i miss?"

Anyone else notice that Star Office's Menus and Toolbars are strikingly close to MS Office 2003? Down to the names and order of icon placement in the toolbars. http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=a2c2239ed1854a a07adc092f578f95a3

I think the anti-ms crowd is intellectually dishonest not to point this out. If/whenever MS pulls something like that you guys scream from the roof tops. Why is it different when its done to MS? Is your argument principled or not? Or is it simply anything but MS? If that is the case, your stance takes us down a more dangerous road than only MS.

I know someone is going to scream its not the case. For those people, click on the above link and open Word 2k3. But if that's not enough then how about this for example; What happens if/when StarOffice 9.0 gets rid of the File menus and goes to the ribbon design model that MS is using with the next Office? Will that be acceptable too? I mean, I guess copying is the nicest form of flattery, but... well. go head, I'm bracing for the modding.

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