On 09 Mar 2002 11:00, you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wondering whether to use start office or open office. Can u guys tell me
> which is better and the benefits of the one recomended over the other.
StarOffice is merely OpenOffice.org with a few enhancements. Besides a database,
these enhancements are relatively minor, intended to make the product a bit more
'slick' so it can compete better with MS Office.
You cannot measure speed by comparing OpenOffice.org binary build releases with
the StarOffice beta. The OpenOffice.org binary build releases have debugging
symbols enabled, which can slow things down considerably. I would expect there
to be little difference between OpenOffice.org 1.0 and StarOffice 6.0 when they
are released. If anything, StarOffice 6.0 will be a little slower than
OpenOffice.org 1.0. Its 'enhancements' may have a role to play here, introducing
more bloat. Also, it will be compiled more for compatibility rather than for
speed. OpenOffice.org is GPL, allowing anybody to compile it themselves and
create binaries from it. There will be plenty of people making packages
optimised for particular processor architectures, like the i686 and the Athlon,
and this should make the suite run faster.
Being GPL, OpenOffice.org will have more frequent releases than StarOffice. You
can expect OpenOffice.org developers to close the functionality gap with
StarOffice, and on top of that introduce more features that StarOffice doesn't
have. Bugs will also be fixed faster. Since the entire source is available, you
can be assured that you are getting only what you want, with no hidden spyware.
Finally -- and here's the killer -- StarOffice will cost money. The only free
version of StarOffice will be for Solaris. Many companies and individuals are
still skeptical about the idea of something coming for free, so Sun is charging
for the product and providing documentation and support on the side. If you
don't want to pay anything, you can always use OpenOffice.org and you won't be
losing much in the way of functionality.
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan
Windows: The first user interface where you
click Start to turn it off.
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