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[2] Software Review

Toronto, Ontario

StarOffice Release 5.2

http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/

StarOffice^TM 5.2 suite is a "free, full-featured, integrated, interoperable office suite" from Sun Microsystems offering "rich, easy-to-use office productivity tools in a unified desktop environment". StarOffice can be downloaded without charge for the Windows environment and other platforms (e.g., Linux). It takes up much less hard-disk space than Microsoft Office, and, being free, is certainly much cheaper.

According to Sun Microsystems, the office suite "provides complete functionality including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing and photo editing, database, one-click HTML creation and editing, email, browser, internet newsgroup software, schedule and calendar, clip art, templates and more". Comparable in functionality to Microsoft Office, its user interface is intuitive and straightforward. Indeed, StarOffice is "interoperable" with Microsoft Office file formats such as ".doc", ".ppt", and "xls". StarOffice "includes an import/export feature that provides seamless interoperability with Microsoft Office" so that one can easily open and edit existing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files in StarOffice.

One can also save StarOffice documents, spreadsheets, and presentations as Microsoft Office files.

A companion site at http://www.staroffice.com offers a user support discussion group, a developer support discussion group as well as information on the many books available to learn about StarOffice. Also available at this site are "portal services" such as free e-mail addresses of the form you{at}staroffice.com, as well as free web-based storage space for your documents.

A useful list of frequently asked questions is available at http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/5.2/faqs-general.html

For technical types, the source code for StarOffice software is available at OpenOffice.org. Sun has also made the StarOffice APIs and XML file formats available as well, "in an effort to drive standardization across office productivity suites". This means that developers around the world can even modify StarOffice "to best suit their needs, whether to improve their own products, build new value-added products on top of the StarOffice suite, improve existing technology in StarOffice software, or contribute new StarOffice components to the open source community". This move opens up the market to unlimited possibilities for innovation that simply are not possible with closed systems such as Microsoft Office.

I had no trouble downloading the 77 MB installation file and setting up the suite. Still, the file size is daunting if you do not have a high-speed Internet connection, so some users might prefer to order the CD version from Sun. I found the program to be intuitive and easy to use but with some unexpected differences. For instance, unlike Microsoft Office, where users typically use Word or PowerPoint as standalone applications, StarOffice uses an integrated design. That is, from the StarOffice desktop, one creates different types of documents by selecting the document type desired from a pull-down menu.

While version 5.2 of StarOffice includes more than 200 fixes and enhancements over the previous release, there are still some restrictions and problems, particularly in effortlessly exchanging StarOffice documents with Microsoft Office. (For more details, read the review at:

http://www.networkcomputing.com/unixworld/1118/1118uw.html).

Despite these limitations, StarOffice 5.2 is a solid piece of software at a price that is hard to argue with.

This Article Full Text (PDF) Submit a scholarly reply Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Doyle, D. J. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Doyle, D. J.