Just in case people want to see the whole thing review: StarOffice Improves Performance, but Still Can't Rival Microsoft
It has been years since Microsoft had any real competition for its Office productivity suite -- the software package that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Once-popular competitors like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 have been reduced to tiny niche players. But there is a competing office suite that is the darling of those companies, software developers and users who have made hating or battling Microsoft into a sort of religion. It's called StarOffice, and is sold by Sun Microsystems, a maker of high-end hardware and software that is one of Microsoft's biggest critics. Originally developed in Germany, and constantly improved by open-source developers outside Sun, StarOffice runs on Windows, Linux and Sun's own Solaris workstation systems. It includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program and database functionality. It lacks an e-mail, calendar and contacts program like Microsoft's Outlook. The program has its own file formats, but Sun boasts that StarOffice can read and edit Microsoft Office files faithfully, and can save files in Microsoft Office formats so that most of the world can open and edit them using Microsoft Office. You can even set up StarOffice so it always saves all files in Microsoft Office formats, rather than its own format. Sun has just released a new version called StarOffice 7, and I've been testing it. It's slightly easier to use and much better at importing Microsoft documents than last year's version. But it's still not flawless at interchanging documents with Microsoft Office, and for that reason I still can't recommend it wholeheartedly for users who need to exchange more than very basic documents. The key virtue of StarOffice is that it's cheap. Sun sells it for $80, compared with the hundreds of dollars Microsoft charges, especially for versions of Office that include the Access database program. In fact, StarOffice can be had free. Users can download a free open-source version of the program, called OpenOffice 1.1, at www.openoffice.org1. OpenOffice is essentially identical to StarOffice, except Sun provides a better spell checker, more fonts and more database capabilities. But these price advantages aren't as great as they once would have been, because Microsoft has been stealthily cutting the price of Office for consumers. A version of Microsoft Office called the Student and Teacher edition costs only $149, and can legally be installed on up to three PCs in a household. It is supposed to be sold only to students and teachers, but Microsoft also says it can be purchased by anyone living in a household with pretty much anyone who attends, or teaches at, any kind of educational institution. And, in fact, most stores ask no questions at all when you buy it. I tested StarOffice 7 for two main things: ease of use, and the ability to import and export documents in Microsoft formats -- a necessity in a world where most people use Microsoft Office. This program has a strong techie heritage, and is now controlled by a company and an open-source community that couldn't tell a normal, nontechnical computer user from a bag of Cheetos. But in version 7, the help system has been vastly improved. Most of the icons and menus follow the conventions set by Microsoft. Installation seemed simpler. There are still techie vestiges in some of the options menus. The new version retains my favorite inscrutable option choice: "size optimization for XML format (no pretty printing)." And some tasks, such as inserting page numbers and viewing word count, are still too hard. One annoying feature tries to complete words you type. But all in all, StarOffice is a bit easier to use. The biggest improvement has been in the import and export of Microsoft Office documents. I tried several of the same highly complex Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents I tested last year, and version 7 handled them better. When they were opened in StarOffice 7, some formatting was still messed up, but more of the files looked about the same as they did in Microsoft Office. One complicated PowerPoint file, with various transitions and sound effects, reproduced perfectly. I then composed a simpler test file in Microsoft Word, mainly consisting of text in various colors, fonts and oddball styles, plus embedded graphics files, tables and clip art. StarOffice 7 rendered this file very well, even replicating unusual formatting, like engraved and embossed fonts. The spacing between the graphics was a little off, but easily corrected. But StarOffice choked on the exporting side of the equation. After editing the same file in StarOffice, I then saved it and reopened it in Word. The text, with the right fonts and formats -- even columns and tables -- came through fine. But several embedded graphics were missing, which could be a disaster in an important business document sent to a Microsoft user. Version 7 has a few nice added file features, like saving any file in Adobe's PDF format, which Microsoft Office can't, and saving presentations as Macromedia Flash files, common on the Web. But as I said last year, this program is mainly for light users preparing basic documents who either can't afford Office, or hate Microsoft so much they'll live with some complexity and limitations. On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 07:12:44PM -0500, Joel Hammer wrote: > I can't link to it because it is from Thurs and it requires a subscription. > > But: > > The WSJ technology guy reviewed SO 7. He said the following: SO 7 is > much better then SO 6 for importing all types of MS Office documents, > including excel and powerpoint as well as word. He was very impressed > by how well things imported. The big problem, from his point of view, > is that exporting documents to MS Office is much less well developed. So, > he wouldn't recommend it for anybody who has to exchange documents with > MS Office. He pointed out that SO, but not MS Office, can export to PDF. > The installation of SO seems much easier than before. (I installed my > copy with one mouse click.) He noted that page numbering and some other > items were more difficult in SO than MS. > > He also noted that MS is "stealthily" reducing the price of its consumer > software. You can buy an academic copy, which can be installed up to three > times, at stores, and have only the weakest link to a full time student, > or none. This runs about $150 dollars. So, the pricing differential is > getting much less. This tends to support my contention that the biggest > beneficiaries of the linux movement will be current MS users who don't > switch to linux. > > Joel > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://smtp.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://smtp.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users