Sun Wrestles Itself With StarOffice 9

“Much of the marketing material sent out prior to StarOffice’s
release emphasizes the product’s advantages over Microsoft Office,
describing it as “the leading alternative” (even though it is well
behind in market share), and, at $60 for the standard version,
significantly cheaper. The material even tries to take advantage of
the fact that StarOffice has stayed with traditional menus and
toolbars not followed Microsoft Office’s lead and converted to
ribbons. “Is new always better?” the material asks, and, pointing
to the ribbon, “Does this look like a Windows application?”

“But Sun also gives attention to differences between StarOffice
and OpenOffice.org. Unlike OpenOffice.org, Sun states, StarOffice
comes with indemnity against patent infringement, and comes with
consulting and support services — apparently forgetting that Sun
has offered support for OpenOffice.org for some time now.

“This sort of self-wrestling is perhaps inescapable, because,
although StarOffice 9 is a major advance over the previous release,
with enhanced notes and multiple page views in Writer, tables in
Impress, improved VBA support throughout, native support for Mac OS
X, and hundreds of other enhancements, most — probably all — of
these improvements are shared by OpenOffice.org 3.0. What’s more,
OpenOffice.org was released more than a month ago, making
StarOffice’s enhanced features seem like old news.”

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