LinuxWorld: A First Look at StarOffice 6.0

"You can buy Sun StarOffice Suite 6.0 from a number of sources at varying prices. Sun sells it online (see Resources) for $75.95, for example. StarOffice is included with Mandrake 8.2 PowerPack Edition. If you are a Ximian Red Carpet Express customer, it is a free download over its high-speed pipe.

"How high speed, you ask? Well, on my 1-gigahertz AMD K7-powered desktop box with 512 megabytes of RAM on a cablemodem, I had StarOffice 6.0 downloaded and installed in about 10 minutes total time. That's quick. When it was finished, StarOffice showed up in the drop-down Programs menu of the Ximian GNOME desktop toolbar. The splash screen shows up about 5 seconds after clicking, and the default word processing document appears about 15 seconds later. Subsequent startups were slightly faster.

"StarOffice 6.0 is quite a bit different from the earlier versions. No longer does it attempt to co-opt your desktop and want to be your e-mail client as well. If the e-mail module still exists, it is hidden. I could find no signs of it anywhere. What 6.0 does provide is an excellent suite of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, and database tools. All of which Sun touts as Microsoft Office compatible. That compatibility coupled with multiplatform offerings (Linux, Solaris, and Windows) greases the skids for those wanting to cut the ties that bind to Redmond..."

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• LinuxWorld: A first look at gobeProductive 3.0(Jun 04, 2002)
• ZDNet: Sun's StarOffice No Longer Free(May 28, 2002)
• IT-Director: The Value of StarOffice(May 22, 2002)
• CNET News: Sun Puts $76 Price Tag on Office Rival (May 15, 2002)
• LinuxPlanet: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 1.0(May 08, 2002)