Customer Reviews

Sun StarOffice 5.2 Deluxe

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Suns' StarOffice 5.2 Deluxe offers an integrated Word Processor, SpreadSheet, DataBase, Presentation Program, Calculation programe, Email, WYSWYG Website Editor and Browser. The software works well together, and has a short learning curve, although some of the features are difficult to locate at first, the process becomes easier in time. StarOffice uses Suns Java inplementation for several of its features, especially it's browser, and so runs roughly on slower systems (below 200 Mhz) but this is a minor drawback when you consider the price conpared to that of other full office Suites, like MicroSoft Office 2000, a comparable package. While the software can be downloaded for free from Sun's site, purchasing is makes sense if (1) you lack the bandwidth to download the nearly 80 MB of files, (2) you want to install the software on more than one computer, or (3) you want the documentation that comes with this CD. This would be a bargain at several times the price. StarOffice 5.2 can save files in a Office 97 0r 2000 format, and can read the files generated by those programs. As an alternate Office Suite, there is little support fo templates and tutorials on the web for this package, Although Amazon does carry "Sun Star Office 5.1 for Windows," which will help with most of the features in version 5.2. I recommend this for home and office use.

There are many great things about the Microsoft Office; however, the STAR OFFICE aquired by SUN is a great Office Suite for the fraction of the price of MS Office. You can download this software for free at SUN.COM... however most of us with modems have to wait eight hours or so. The price for Star Office is very reasonable (considering you save a two hundred dollars over MS Office). Furthermore Star Office works on multiple operating systems besides Windows like Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD, and I tried it on BeOS 4.5 as well (some features like the PRESENTATION and EMAIL don't work on BeOS but it's still better than MS Office which doesn't work on at all)....

For all you guys who love to have multiple operating systems running like LINUX, WINDOWS, and BSD. Star Office is great since you don't have to buy an individual application for each operating system. I have a friend using MS Office for Windows, Corel Office for Linux and a weird one for BSD.

Save time and money and use STAR OFFICE. if you are college student and worry that your files from the computer center on MS OFFICE and LOTUS won't work on STAR OFFICE on your home PC -- then hey don't worry.

I have tried all files from Calendar, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Access they all transfer to Star Office. The same is true when you transfer them back to MS Office.

SUN STAR OFFICE is not only a great office suite but a message to the propreitary world that open source code is the wave of the future.

StarOffice is a full-nelson office application suite from SUNwho purchased it originally from StarDivision of Germany. The latest version 5.2 is available on CD-ROMfrom SUN... (you "heard" me right!) and alternatively you may download it from SUN's website. But don't let the low low price fool you or sway you from getting a copy now! I once looked up the price back when this product was StarDivision property, and it was in the range of 500 Deutche Marks (I'll let you do the monetary translation.)

StarOffice is available natively for the following operating system platforms: Linux, Solaris, and Windows. Version 5.1b is still available for OS/2 users. As a side note, SUN also has a "StarPortal" version initiative going on to bring Office productivity services via the internet.

StarOffice consists of the following fully integrated applications: Wordprocessor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Scheduler, Graphics/Drawing, Email, Database, GUI FTP-client, GUI HTML-editor, and more. Users moving to StarOffice can open and edit their old MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Lotus Amipro/Word or 123 files, but many more file formats are supported including StarOffice native file formats. Webmasters can build HTML websites withStarOffice's HTML GUI-editor, Java support, graphics tools, and full FTP client to make editing and saving web documents up on the server or locally fully seamless. Email support includes POP3/IMAP/LDAP/SENDMAIL/NEWS, and you can setup multiple email accounts simultaneously.

StarOffice installs in about 15 minutes (with server or local options possible), looks and feels exactly the same across platforms, and you can run it as an independent application or as your replacement desktop. It has it's own "Start Menu" that presents you with all your programs, as well as all your desktop icons. You can see a great deal of thought went into the design of this product with an integrated workspace in mind.

Office managers looking to save money by avoiding more expensive products and licensing issues may find their holy grail in StarOffice from SUN, with the added benefit of support for multiple computer platforms. Home computer users will save a bundle too, and yet still be able to work with their old MS Word documents, etc.

StarOffice is a product whose time has come. You are certainly missing out if you pass it by....

by Peter Baitz, the trimatrix group, llc,

Since I first got Star Office 5.1 I have been awaiting the development of Star Office 5.2. My wait was well worth it. 5.2 is more user friendly than it's previous version. I installed it on Red Hat 6.1 and it went right in without any problems. I opened it up and was able to immediately go to work developing a word document. The menu's are laid out well and it's easy to find all the text editing features. ( I have had one problem finding out how to change the default margins - but that will come with a bit more investigation) Along with a great word processor is a whole suite of other great things such as the spread sheet, presentation program and scheduler. Star Office has made a great office suite, for very little money and it works on Linux, Windows, Sun Sparc and Unix. Who else can make that claim! There's now no reason not to dump that high priced office product sitting on your windows machine for Star Office at a fantastic price. And yes, it imports and exports to MS Word documents.

Sun sets its StarOffice against the reigning office suite champion out of Redmond, WA. While the interface takes a bit getting used to, once you master it, you are up and running with a full complement of applications. If you're like me, you started using the suite because of the price, a full magnitude below what Bill's folks are charging. I found the compatibility between Sun's suite and others (Corel and MS) to be great. StarOffice will read and write most other formats. The word processor performs many tasks more simply and elegantly than Word. The presentation program is also a breeze with many great-looking templates. This newest version sports a stand-alone viewer and smaller presentation file sizes. Add an integrated email program, database, draw program, and awesome Internet connectivity ... and you have the best value in software today. However, the program does not offer a Macintosh version, even though it is available in many different languages. Buy StarOffice and stop using that illegal copy of MS or Corel. Your conscience will be salved and your wallet won't be robbed.

I was lucky enough to work with the 5.1 version of this program and I liked what I saw. I grabbed a copy of Star Office 5.2 when it was first released and I can honestly say Star Office has come along way from the last (5.1) edition.

Users of Star Office 5.1 will find little to no problems updating to version 5.2 New users to Star Office will find a similar interface to the popular Office Suites.

Cross-platform use and compatabilty are important issues in today's market of diffrent software in diffrent organizations. Star Office makes that worry an almost concern of the past. At home, I easily created Presentations, Documents and Spreadsheets that easily transferred over to my Microsoft Office run organization. Star Office also has an e-mail/newsgroup reader, HTML Editor, scheduling, drawing, database and imaging programs. In other words - it is a fully intergrated office suite.

I recommend Star Office 5.2 to new and old users of OFfice Suites - many of the "cosmetic" concerns with 5.1 have now been corrected.

Lastly, Star Office isn't as memory intensive as several of the popular Office Suites.

I think it's amazing that the whole world hasn't adopted StarOffice yet. IT'S A FREE OFFICE SUITE THAT HANDLES MS OFFICE FORMATS. Cripes. Does anyone think MS Office doesn't have enough money yet? ;>

Nothing for Mac users yet, but it runs on Windows and Linux and Solaris, and that covers a lot of people.

I've used it for about 6 months and I have no idea why anyone would still be flinging their money at MS Office. StarOffice isn't perfect, but neither, by a long shot, is MS Office. (I think the last time Word was a good product was 1995, on a Mac.) StarOffice is kind of like a proxy to MS Office--it reads and writes all the Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. files that everyone sends you, and you can send anyone a StarOffice file in the MS Office file of their choice. But, of course, you don't have to actually have or PAY for MS Office. And you get a couple nice little drawing/picture editing programs that can do pretty decent stuff. (Not a substitute for PhotoShop, but PhotoShop is $700.) I was messing around with old college files in Corel and WordStar, and StarOffice even opened those.

You're probably going to need a book to use it fully. It's not hard to get started and do basic stuff, there's lots of wizards and everything, but every time you right-click there's 10 more features that you'll be able to use a lot easier if you've got a book. I strongly recommend "StarOffice Companion" by Floyd Jones. Every time I look in the index or the contents, I find the thing I'm looking for, and the instructions tell me exactly how to do it, and it works. It's kind of amazing. ;> Oh, and it tells you right at the front how to turn off the Microsoft-like Helpful Tips and autoformatting and stuff.

There isn't much in here that isn't in the download version, fonts and clipart I guess... I have both, got the full version as a gift, and didn't notice much diffrence.

StarOffice has replaced the office suites from Lotus and Microsoft on my home PC. I can't imagine volunteering to upgrade either product.

When I first loaded StarOffice its unfamiliar layout, the Beamer feature, and poor reference documentation made me crazy. I actually uninstalled the product for a while. That's all changed. I love the knowledge/document management abilities of beamer, the web-like interface, and built in browser... to name a few features.

StarOffice 5.2 is a very well integrated product. It is not yet ready to challenge the market position of MS Office but Star's developers are on the right track. Version 5.2 is an excellent choice for home use, small business, and students. Particularly students (or their parents) who are concerned about the financial consequences of software piracy that go with "borrowing" a copy of MS Office!

Initially a little hard to get used to, but once you master the user interface, you'll be hooked. You can do almost anything with Star Office that you can with Microsoft Office.

The capability of opening and saving to MS Office file formats makes this the program to have.

I use Star Office exclusively for all of my work, on both my Windows and Linux machines.