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
