Rating: 
Summary: Big Gold Star to Sun for StarOffice 6.0
Review: I must admit that I was skeptical when I ordered StarOffice 6.0. I have been a long-time user and supporter of Microsoft Office products. However, Microsoft's steep upgrade pricing caused me to begin to look elsewhere for a possible replacement that wouldn't bust our IS budget. StarOffice is the replacement for our company. With very few exceptions, it read all of our Word and Excel files without a hitch. Staff re-training has been minimal. GOOD JOB Sun!
Rating:
Summary: Just Say No! (To Microsoft Office) Here's an Alternative!
Review:
Whether you're a power office suite user or just someone who dabbles in spreadsheets and word processing documents, this product covers your bases! With the new copy protection schemes in all the Microsoft Office products, it's no longer possible to use the same copy of MS Office at work and at home. That reduces your options to 1) paying a lot for an office suite for home use, or 2) searching for an alternative. I chose the second option, and I'm glad I did.
First of all, StarOffice 6.0 actually reads and writes Microsoft Office documents without "converting" them or taking them through a filter. This means you'll have seamless read/write capability on documents prepared by MS Office users. You'll have a powerful spreadsheet that finally gives you a cut and paste function without the quirkiness of the one in Excel, and which provides 98% of the functionality of Excel. (I would have said 100%, but I haven't found pivot table functionality in StarOffice yet.) You'll have a fantastic word processor that comes with tons of fonts and a look and feel that's very similar to MS Word. You'll have the Adabas database, a fantastic drawing program, and you'll have a presentation tool that rivals MS PowerPoint. Oh... and one more thing you'll have... a few extra c-notes in your pocket. I have used Microsoft Office XP and StarOffice 6.0, and to be honest, the Office XP is a more refined interface and has a bit more polish on it, but SUN has come close to the MS Office product's look and feel, and has given us StarOffice at a very attractive price. Plus, they've chosen to omit the crazy hardware-level copy protection scheme that Microsoft "threw in" with MS Office. You'll be impressed... It's clean, doesn't "take over" your system, runs great, and gives you a full-blown office suite at a fraction of the cost. 5 Stars! (and then some)
Rating:
Summary: Sun Microsystems Star Office 6.0 Review
Review: If I were to choose one word to describe the new StarOffice 6.0, it would be "terrific," but I'm not sure if this word does it the justice it rightfully deserves. I tried StarOffice 6.0 only a few weeks ago, and it is extremely powerful and very customizable. It gives you a lot more value for you money than any other current commercial office suite, and for only [money] you get all of the Microsoft Office equivalents and even some areas which only StarOffice 6.0 covers.
Only StarOffice areas:
-Drawing/Graphics
-HTML Document Both StarOffice and Microsoft Office:
- Presentation
- Spreadsheet
- Database
- Formulas
- Text One of the most important things that newcomers to StarOffice 6.0 would appreciate is its full compatibility with other office suites including Microsoft's popular Office XP, and Corel's WordPerfect 2002. StarOffice 6.0 uses a much more efficient format which is understood by any XML-based device, now and in the distant future, unlike Microsoft's proprietary file-type. Sun's StarOffice 6.0 gives you a lot more bang for your buck, it only costs [a few dollars more] while Microsoft's office suite costs a whopping [amount of] dollars and you still have to go through the trouble of activating it. Microsoft also uses per-seat licensing which will only let you install Microsoft Office on one computer and, if you try to install it on more than one computer, it will fail to work. Sun was very generous to the education market by giving it to schools for free. This means that you can install one copy of StarOfffice 6.0 on all school computers without breaking the law. Even better, those who cannot afford to spend [extra] on this great office suite, may get a less complete version of StarOffice free, from [website]. Sun also supports open source, so the code to this powerful office suite was released to the public freely in the form of OpenOffice. "Open Source" implies that the program code is available to all. This, in turn, means that thousands of developers work on the further development of StarOffice. Sun's StarOffice 6.0 does not just support open source, they also support all commonly used platforms, including Unix, Linux, Windows and, soon, Mac OS X. StarOffice 6.0 has been well received by a wide variety of people, like casual users, business people and people working in the education industry. Another part of StarOffice's consumers just want to escape from Microsoft's tight grip and they're happy StarOffice is the way out. Sun's product is currently the #1 selling product in the software section of Amazon and it holds a prestigious rating of four and a half stars out of five.
All in all, StarOffice 6.0 is a must-have upgrade and while it has its share of problems, most casual users will probably never notice them. The bugs reported for StarOffice 6.0 will also be fixed by the end of June when the first major update will become downloadable worldwide from the official homepage of StarOffice 6.0.
Rating:
Summary: Exceeded my expectations
Review: Well what can I say? Already been using it to good effect, really has been stable on one SuSE Linux system and one Windows XP system. Indeed one can hardly tell them apart on either system. One big thing that is included is a 460 page manual, a setup guide a support entitlement guide. Binary code license in many different languages. Plus a few more items that I will let you find out. Found some weird Excel spreadsheets that opened fine. Heard some Murmuring that StarOffice 6 had issues with opening some complicated Excel files and documents. I have not run into these myself and wonder if the reviewers were doing something exceptional. All in all a great product!
Rating:
Summary: Best value, excellent software, what more could you want?
Review: I don't have much to add to what other people have said. StarOffice is the best value on the office suite market, and it's based on the open-source project OpenOffice.org. If you don't know what open-source means, it basically means that the underlying code of the product is freely available to anyone who wants to look at it. This has a lot of implications, but chiefly it means that the software will be more robust and long-living. If Sun Microsystems disappeared for some reason, the software would live on. This is the future, and it's great!
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the money
Review: Short and to the point: this is an amazing product. Very well done, great Word compatibility and a super price.
Rating:
Summary: Wow amazing product !!!
Review: This is just the best office suite ever! And the price much less than Microsoft office. It has everything you need. I m going to uninstall my 30-day trial of Office XP - won't need it anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I would give this software more than 5 stars if possible. Star Office 6 is essentially a beefed up version of the OpenOffice.org 1.0 software, which includes extra templates, fonts, tech support, and functional Adabas database software. I have been hammering on OpenOffice for a while, and the 1.0 release is exceptional! I urge you to try this as an excellent, low cost (but just as functional) alternative to MS Office. It is an incredible product. Though I use OpenOffice, I am considering paying for Star Office to get some of the extra bells and whistles. This is a drastic improvement over version 5.2. And did I mention that it is multi-platform?
Rating:
Summary: More Than Viable Alternative to MS
Review: This product contains everything a normal corporate or home user would ever need. That does not mean it has everything MS does, but the few things it does not have would only affect maybe 5% of the users. We have been testing the beta verion in our corporate network. Our users (8 with minimal computer skills in the testing group), have made the switch from MS Office to StarOffice with a minimum of difficulty. We have only had problems with the conversion of 2 spreadsheets that had macros, but have worked the problems out. Reading and writing of MS office files - fantastic!! The test group had no problems working with the rest of our corporate computer users who used MS Office. We are now planning to move to StarOffice for out corporate standard. Removing MS Office. By the way doesn't anyone find if funny how you can by a 2.0 Ghtz system for under [price] with everything. But to buy MS XP Professional OS is [price]and MS Office Standard for [price]. Microsoft charges for software almost equals the value of the system. All costs go down in a competitive arena, but where there is a monopoly the prices seem to keep going up. (prices stated here for MS products obtained from Amazon.com after special offers). Go back and look at the software versus hardware costs and how the software costs have kept going up as Microsoft has ............... - My compliments to SUN for such a good product!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Office?
Review: Most "offices" have email and a calendar. StarOffice 6.0 has neither. StarOffice 5.2 had both. Will Sun remove the word processor from version 7.0?
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