Staroffice 6.0b

October 8, 2001 4:21 PM

Staroffice 6.0b is a great, free alternative to microsoft office for people who can't afford the suite or for those that would rather not use microsoft products. Staroffice has completely integrated XML support and full featured word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing applications.
posted by mcsweetie (25 comments total)

AND you only know how to install and run linux!
posted by jcterminal at 4:42 PM on October 8, 2001

OR you can download and run the version for Microsoft Windows!
posted by chrish at 4:51 PM on October 8, 2001

I tried it out for my workplace and was very impressed. It was basically functionally equivalent to MS Office 97(+ drawing), imported Office documents well (I even successfully used it to partially recover a corrupted Excel spreadsheet), started up quickly (a huge problem in 5.2) and was very responsive (more so than Office 2000 and XP)
My workplace is probably not going to bite, since we'd need to provide significant training to make the switch. However, I would highly recommend it to home users unwilling to pop for the exorbinant cost of MS Office.
BTW, I couldn't get the Java support to work. (Win 2000 Pro); It had a button to install it, but the installer hung up when I clicked it. Any ideas?
posted by boaz at 4:57 PM on October 8, 2001

I've tried earlier versions of StarOffice once or twice, and it always felt too painfully slow to use, and wasn't consistent enough in its support for MS Office file formats to be really useful. Has it been improving substantially lately? In particular, has its speed and memory usage improved?

(I'm a Linux user, and have used AbiWord when I've needed a word processor in the past, so I'm certainly eager to see something like this work out well--just not if it's as bloated as the previous version of StarOffice was.)

Oh... since I started typing this post, boaz has reported that it is faster than 5.2. That's a good sign. Maybe I'll check it out.
posted by moss at 5:06 PM on October 8, 2001

StarOffice 6 is cool. And it will be even cooler once it works properly (when they say beta they mean it folks!)

I'm a big fan of AbiWord myself, use it on my windows box. There's just something inheranly loveable about a standalone wordprocessor. No suite, no extra's. Just text, and all the word counting and other WYSIWIG I could ask for. aaahhh.
posted by nedrichards at 5:36 PM on October 8, 2001

I downloaded a version this week and thought it was pretty good... I'm not a professional writer, sheet spreader or presenter, so perhaps I'm easy to please.

It's a good way to keep away from the increasingly draconian Microsoft licensing schemes...
posted by websavvy at 5:43 PM on October 8, 2001

I have been using 602 PC Suite at home. I like it for my limited needs.
posted by bjgeiger at 5:47 PM on October 8, 2001

yeah sorry. As a student historian person I have to spend more time looking at a word processor than i'd really like. the recent versions of ms word are great, but I can't really legally affoard it and I try not to encourage them even further in their paranoia. Thus I spend lots of time looking around for 'Word beaters'. As everyone knows StarOffice 5.2 is too slow and at present AbiWord crashes too often. WordPerfect's nice if you need something now? Otherwise wait for the joy of StarOffice and AbiWord.
posted by nedrichards at 5:54 PM on October 8, 2001

MS Works Suite (which includes Word 2000 as well as the cut down Works WP) was preinstalled on my laptop when I bought it, esentially free for me. The spreadsheet part of Works is OK but sometimes I miss a few Excel features like conditional formatting. I used the Powerpoint and Excel Viewers to view docs sent to me by other people. Your choice of Office suite generally comes down to how complicated you make your documents and who you want to share them with.
posted by Foaf at 6:09 PM on October 8, 2001

Oh... since I started typing this post, boaz has reported that it is faster than 5.2. That's a good sign. Maybe I'll check it out.

I haven't tried it out on linux yet or any machine slower than a 1 Ghz Pentium III w/256 meg of ram, so I can't really speak on how well it will run on other setups. Also, my limited experience with SO 5.2 on both windows and linux was so uniformly annoying (sloooow! and crash-prone) that maybe I'm just pleasantly surprised rather than actually pleased. Still, startup time is down from ~30 secs to ~5 secs and everything feels much snappier.

StarOffice 6 is cool. And it will be even cooler once it works properly (when they say beta they mean it folks!)

I had no crashes at all in my testing; I wish I could say the same about my use of MS Office 2000.
posted by boaz at 6:24 PM on October 8, 2001

I'll second the idea that if StarOffice is going to have the features you want then MS Works is a lot less expensive than Office and does a great job for many people.

While I am all for supporting alternative software, Sun is far from a morally preferable alternative vendor than Microsoft.
posted by soulhuntre at 6:45 PM on October 8, 2001

oh! there's a windows version?

nevermind my previous post. rock on.
posted by jcterminal at 6:48 PM on October 8, 2001

I'll second the idea that if StarOffice is going to have the features you want then MS Works is a lot less expensive than Office and does a great job for many people.

MS Works Suite is still about $80 retail vs. free for StarOffice. And IMHO everything in it except Word and Money is utter crap. Even if word-processing and finance-tracking are all you need, I'd still recommend SO + Quicken over Works. Once it leaves beta, that is.

While I am all for supporting alternative software, Sun is far from a morally preferable alternative vendor than Microsoft.

Let me explain the difference: MS Office Pro $500, StarOffice $0. Whatever their relative morality levels, Microsoft is trying to charge more for their office suite than an entire computer costs nowadays. If Sun can bring that price back into line, more power to them.
posted by boaz at 7:19 PM on October 8, 2001

For gimps like me (its ms Word 97 compliant) there's Jarte
posted by BentPenguin at 7:21 PM on October 8, 2001

I dunno, i actually like 5.2 better. I'm one of those user who like all of the programs in one larger program, not like MS Office or Staroffice 6.0 where each text file is a different "task", since i tend to run numerous text files at once. i got the beta of 6.0, but i'm sticking w/ 5.2 till' the final release. Either way, u can't beat the cost!
posted by jmd82 at 8:30 PM on October 8, 2001

I have problems with Word 97 locking up. I've noted all of the links above, but I wondered--if you just want a stable word processor for Windows (98SE for us right now), not really needing a suite, what do you recommend? The less bloated the better.
posted by aflakete at 8:59 PM on October 8, 2001

I have a soft spot for Yeah Write, which is lovely and stable and is the kind of thing my MSOffice-fearing mother could use. It's written by programmers who worked on WordPerfect, could see the development of the office suite into utter bloatware, and wanted something simpler. Very incompatible with Word formats, sadly. (602Office is very nice, and pretty compatible.)

But I don't use Word any more, not after it fucked over my masters' thesis. And LaTeX lets me indulge my typographical fetishes (fnar) while allowing me to concentrate on the content within a bog-standard text editor.
posted by holgate at 9:43 PM on October 8, 2001

If Word 97 floats your boat, then by all means use it. I'm a big fan of using some older Microsoft stuff at home. I've tried out StarOffice 5.2, and I gotta say that it just doesn't hold up to Word.
posted by Orkboi at 10:14 PM on October 8, 2001

"Let me explain the difference: MS Office Pro $500, StarOffice $0."

OK, I'll give SO that. It's free.

Now, of course int he real word the price of the software is only a fraction of it's actual price.

How much extra does it cost in lost time to missing features, bad import conversion or user training - and how much in support?

If it does what someone needs and it si free then cool, go use it. But there are lots of reasons why the $500 for office might wind up costing a lot LESS over time.
posted by soulhuntre at 11:51 PM on October 8, 2001

I followed holgate's link, and I'm all for snazzy LaTeX typesetting, but I'd dispute the claim that this technology allows authors to concentrate on content. The article uses the example of Jane Austen, who "was not a typesetter." I agree, and accordingly, I think she would probably have an easier time pouring her words into Word 2000 with some low-level formatting than marking up a document with a bunch of tags that only a typesetter could love...
posted by Zurishaddai at 12:18 AM on October 9, 2001

Note that you can buy a Word + Works bundle for as little as $80 depending on various upgrade factors. If wp is most important to you, but you'd like the compatibility with M$, it can cover a lot of peoples' needs, especially the home office market.

(Not for me, though; I spend too much time in both Word and Excel, and the Works equivalents are too lame for words to fall back on if you're at all experienced in both.)
posted by dhartung at 4:22 AM on October 9, 2001

Now, of course int he real word the price of the software is only a fraction of it's actual price.

Well, that depends what you mean by the real world. Part of your unwritten assumption is that real world = business world. The chance that a non-professional user will save the $500 cost of MS Office or even the $80 cost of MS Works is negligible.

Here's what I had to say about this matter in my first post:

My workplace is probably not going to bite, since we'd need to provide significant training to make the switch. However, I would highly recommend it to home users unwilling to pop for the exorbinant cost of MS Office.

I'm of course perfectly willing to expound on this further, but I don't think we have any real disagreement on this issue.
posted by boaz at 6:27 AM on October 9, 2001

Sigh... in the good old days, spending the $500 for a work copy of MS Office meant you got a home copy, too...

:)
posted by ph00dz at 6:40 AM on October 9, 2001

I've been using Yeah Write for a couple of years now. Still retain Word, but 90% of the time I use Yeah Write. I'm almost insanely grateful for the simple existence of this very functional and beautifully designed program. I hated having to rely on Word. /end of rhapsody
posted by lucien at 7:16 AM on October 9, 2001

While I am all for supporting alternative software, Sun is far from a morally preferable alternative vendor than Microsoft.

If I'm remembering right, Sun has released StarOffice under the GPL (under the name OpenOffice), so, while Sun can certainly be pretty nasty, there's really nothing they can do to take it back now.
posted by moss at 10:06 AM on October 9, 2001