StarOffice 6.0

Rating:
Summary: Go StarOffice!
Review: I WAS a complete beginner with StarOffice and Linux but with the companion and this software I have become profecient in ALL aspects. Absoulutely amazing, and I must say its 100% better than Microsoft Office. And to all Linux users: You won't be disappointed. StarOffice is an upgrade to OpenOffice which is included with Red Hat 8/9.

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Summary: There is an Outlook alternative!
Review: To the guy who was wondering where the open source alternative to Outlook is, check out Ximian Evolution! It's awesome and will integrate with M$ products even Exchange Server. Get Evolution and StarOffice and your liberation from Redmond will be complete! :)

Rating:
Summary: Why bother?
Review: The big question I asked is, why bother? My copy is heading to the auction site.

Rating:
Summary: A good alternative but where's my Outlook alternative?
Review: First, I loathe how greedy and expen$ive MS is, even more so now with its insane new licensing rules. Their licensing model is far too complex and lord knows -- way way way too anal. For a small business like ours, the challenges to stay legal -- both financially and the labor hours required to figure out MS licensing is nearly a full time job in itself. Way too much money, way too much effort for licensing. When you have to exert yourself more to keep up on licensing than to acctually setup/config/install the software itself -- something's wrong with that picture.

StarOffice 6.0 is a great way to save stress and mucho money....but where is the alternative to Outlook? PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD someone in the opensource world make a worthy alternative to Outlook!! Then we'll be 100% free from MS Office Hell!! :)

Btw, to the poster from FL blaming StarOffice for his fan shutting down --- GET A CLUE. Your post demonstrated you know nothing of hardware! Read a book, take a course...then troubleshoot don't just jump to conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: For most of us, this is *more* than we could ever need
Review: I'm not sure if the average person uses even 20% of the capabilities of MS Office. Most people make extensive use of Word and Outlook, good use of Excel, fair use of PowerPoint, and almost no use of Access. STAROFFICE IS A GREAT ALTERNATIVE THAT WILL SAVE YOU HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! Before purchasing, please note that Sun offers this product for download under the name "openoffice".

Benefits of StarOffice:
* Great compatibility with MS Office apps, particularly Word; you'll be hard-pressed to find a Word file that doesn't open accurately (preserved formatting) in Star. In fact, compatibility is *far* better than WordPerfect presently offers--and I'm a WP user from back when it was one of the original "killer applications"
* StarOffice Draw (for creating graphics) blows Word's drawing tools out of the water. This has always been a weakness of Word. Draw is comparable, if not better than, drawing tools in WordPerfect.
* StarOffice Adabas (database application) is included (getting MS Access requires buying MS Office Pro) and is easier to use than MS Access. Adabas integrates with other StarOffice apps so, for instance, users can easily create mail merge documents.

Drawbacks:
* MAJOR: No MS Outlook: This really may be the most important part of MS Office. Detractors can complain all they want, but there is just no PIM available that is near its equal. (The opensource community is working on this, however.)
* MEDIUM: I have yet to see a presentation package as good as PowerPoint (which is by no means perfect). I do hear that Apple's got a good new one, but most of us use PC.
* MINOR: No pivot tables in Excel: If you don't know what a pivot table is, then you don't need to worry that it's not available.
* MINOR: Interface to MS Office apps is more refined than StarOffice's.
* MINOR: MS Access is a better database application, but Adabas is easier to use.

For home or small- to medium- business use, this is a no-brainer. Frankly, with Microsoft's new licensing policies, which will penalize people for not upgrading by requiring them to pay full price for new versions if they skip a version, I expect some large corporations to eventually make the switch.

Rating:
Summary: StarOffice6.0 is the bane of my existance.
Review: After installing StarOffice on my PC operating under Windows XP, all of my programs were erased and the fan in my computer ceased to work. The reason I know StarOffice is accountable for this mishap is that as I clicked the (FINISHED) button after the installation, the fan immediately stopped and my computer crashed seconds later. Now I can no longer play Diablo 2, I was almost at the end of the game. I say F' StarOffice 6.0.

Rating:
Summary: where can I buy this product
Review: Hello,

I am writting from Chile, and I would like to know how can I get the StarOffice 6.0. I got in contact with the distributor here but they sell only retail. Where can I get this in USA.?

Cordilly,

Carmen Gloria Gasaui

Rating:
Summary: fabulous office suite, especially for the price
Review: my one complaint with star office is that it's a little bit iffy if you're converting to PDF format.

other than that, it's at least as full featured as MS Office (and how many Office features does anyone *really* use?), but at roughly 1/4 the price.

it's definitely worth the price tag.

Rating:
Summary: Sliced bread had a nice long ride, but now it's over
Review: This is software the way it should be. No paying a month's rent just so you can read Word files, no paying a wad just so you can get a spreadsheet to do your taxes, in a format your accountant will accept.

It's not perfectly usable yet and the doc included is limited at best. But you know, with the hundreds of dollars I've saved, I have enough left over to buy a book, and with the hundreds of dollars I've saved I can pay myself for a couple hours of getting to know the program.

Its open source and free version, OpenOffice.org, is of course an even better deal. Download it today, use it today, distribute it if you want and all for free with *no* license restrictions.

Here are a few things I like in the program, in addition to its' ideological coolness:

********You can edit the source of any document.**************** Any StarOffice or openoffice.org file unzips with Winzip or whatever. You get a styles.xml file, content.xml file, etc. You can go into each file, change paths to graphics or delete bunches of old styles, or whatever. Then zip everything back up again and there's your document, reflecting the changes you made.

Good wizards. They call them AutoPilots, but whatever, they're wizards. It's pretty easy to put together a mail merge letter, business cards, labels, presentations, web pages with multicolumn etc formatting, etc.

You can connect to standard databases. Just go to the data source connection set up window and pick Access, Oracle, etc. The documentation isn't much on the syntax but the StarOffice Companion tells you the syntax to use.

The spreadsheet tool is pretty good. Still a 32,000 row limitation but you know, most of us will be able to keep our enthusiasm in check and stick to 31,500 rows. Good DataPilot wizard thing to bring in data from a data source, and create automatic total fields at the same time.

The drawing program is amazing. If you don't have a vector drawing program that you're absolutely happy with, get StarOFfice or Openoffice.org just for the drawing program. I was blown away. The 3D and Visio type features were a real surprise.

So that's my take on it. Be prepared to spend a little time, rather than a lot of money, getting started with this, and you'll be happy.

Rating:
Summary: Great replacement for an Overpriced Standard (MS)!
Review: I haven't had this product long enough to give a full review but, in my long experience with Office suites, I find StarOffice 6.0 to compare (and possibly surpass?) MS office suite Pro for Windows XP. There are a few items that are not available compared with the MS suite such as designating certain default configurations to basic programs (i.e., Excel).
My only regret so far is that an e-mail program had not been included as part of the package (I much prefer Outlook 2002 over Outlook Express).
I am recommending this to my friends and relatives as an economical way of having MS application compatibale programs.