LinuxPlanet: The StartX Files: Between the Sheets With Calc

"The version of Calc I looked at was from OpenOffice 641b, which at the time of this review was the latest and greatest binary version available for Linux. Since downloading and installing OpenOffice is basically identical to the StarOffice procedure, I won't say much about this process, save to say that like all of the other recent versions of this office suite, you need either a darn big pipe or a lot of free time to download the 76.4 Mb file.

Newcomers to OpenOffice should be made aware that the application is available not only for x86/Linux, but also PPC/Linux as well. It also is available in Solaris (Intel and Sparc) and even Win32, so you get that wonderful cozy feeling of cross-platform availability.

When they first open Calc, new users have got to impressed by the depth of the toolset provided by this spreadsheet. Most of the rest of us, though, know full well that Calc has an impressive lineage of StarOffice versions behind it, so there's been more than enough time to build a very full-featured application.

Calc has it all, too. Everything from row and column controls that have their own context menus quickly manipulate formatting, to sophisticated data management tools that enable you to create pivot tables and other data-enhancing objects."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• CNET News.com: Sun saturated with StarOffice advice (Dec 14, 2001)
• LinuxPlanet: The StartX Files: Between the Sheets With abs(Dec 07, 2001)
• ConsultingTimes.com: The OpenOffice Rosetta Stone (Star/OpenOffice Conversions Put to the Test) (Nov 08, 2001)
• ConsultingTimes: A New Star is Born: StarOffice 6 Rises to the Desktop Challenge (Oct 26, 2001)
• LinuxWorld: A first look at StarOffice 6.0 beta (Oct 05, 2001)
• SolarisGuide: Sun Releases StarOffice 6 Beta(Oct 02, 2001)
• IBM developerWorkks: Reading and writing Excel files with Perl(Sep 30, 2001)