- Platform: Windows NT / 98 / 2000 / Me / XP / 95, Linux, Sun Solaris
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
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Product Description
Amazon.com Review
The StarOffice integrated suite has been quietly growing in popularity since Sun Microsystems bought Star Division, its original German authors, a few years back. The latest version, StarOffice 6, is now one of the best software bargains in the western world. The single CD in the StarOffice box installs on Windows, Solaris, and Unix/Linux. Also in there is a good, fat manual, which goes a long way toward explaining StarOffice functions. Each StarOffice 6 program launches in a standalone window; gone is the StarOffice Desktop, a separate, Works-like interface on which earlier versions used to run.
The word processor in StarOffice, Writer, looks much like its main rivals, Word, WordPerfect, and Word Pro. It supports most of the same heavyweight functions, too, such as outlining, frames, columns, and tables. Table functions include merge, split, and distribution, and cells can be made to expand as you type or stay fixed. Writer's tools include a spell checker, thesaurus, and auto correction of common typing errors. Longer document functions are also supported, with footnotes and endnotes, cross-referencing, indexing, and table of contents.
Writer defaults to a print-layout view of the page, so you can see all elements as you create them, which provides a lot of scope for desktop publishing and even Web page design. All StarOffice programs now use XML as their default file format, so most documents will display directly in Web browsers. Sun realizes it must maintain compatibility with Microsoft, though, and Writer, like the other modules, opens documents from its Office equivalents.
Writer is fully graphical and includes image import and integrated graphics and charting. One of the key ways of adding images to your Writer documents is from the Gallery, a suite-wide clipboard that comes with masses of clip art. You can drag and drop any item from the gallery to a Writer page and, just as easily, drag items from your page to store in the Gallery for use in other documents or modules.
The StarOffice spreadsheet, Calc, is a capable program, though not quite on par with Excel, 1-2-3, or Quattro Pro. As you would expect, you can enter numbers, text, and formulas into the cells and set up relationships between them to conduct all kinds of calculations. Calc supports over 350 different functions, including esoteric ones like number base conversion and complex numbers. The program follows the industry conventions for entering and manipulating numbers, which makes it very easy to use. The charting feature is well-engineered, with a selection of color schemes that can be applied with minimum effort. A basic chart can be constructed with just a couple of mouse clicks, once you've selected your target cells.
Of all the graphics programs in the major integrated suites, StarOffice Draw is far and away the most impressive. As well as being a useful addition to other programs, it can be opened as a separate application in its own right. The core tools for drawing lines, rectangles, and ellipses are there as you'd expect, but more unusual are those for bezier curves, polygons, connectors, arrows, and 3-D objects. Draw is just as capable with photo images as it is at constructing drawings. Import an image and you can adjust its brightness, transparency, and gamma level, as well as apply a range of different filters. While not as comprehensive as a dedicated graphics package, it's exceptionally well-equipped for part of an integrated suite.
Draw's functions are also available in StarOffice Impress, the presentation graphics program. Although this means you can easily incorporate graphic elements into your slides, the program itself is comparatively basic. You're offered the key slide, outline, notes, and handout views for putting together an electronic slide show, but the lackluster designs and lack of coordinated color schemes mean eye-catching presentations are harder to achieve.
The database section of StarOffice 6, Adabas, differs from the other programs in that it is integrated into several programs and is not a standalone application. Pick Tools or Data Sources in Writer or Calc and you can import a data file, such as an address list, into the database program and access it from the other applications. This is ideal for mail shots and makes viewing and manipulating addresses very easy. With different data, this program can be used for many other lists of information.
Overall, StarOffice 6 is a versatile, well-equipped, integrated suite, a rival for the other main players but at an exceptionally attractive price. --Simon Williams.
Product Description
StarOffice software is an affordable alternative in office productivity suites that runs on multiple operating systems, including Solaris Operating Environment, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. The office suite has a simple, easy-to-use interface and contains full-featured applications including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and database capabilities.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quality, freedom, oh, and a _lot_less_ cost,
By A Customer
This review is from: StarOffice 6.0 (CD-ROM)
Awesome product, I'd played with SO 5.2 a while back and it was good, but a little buggy. This one however is great. It has way more functionality than any normal mortal needs. So far at least there's not been anything I wanted to do that I couldn't (though to be fair, I sometimes had to look twice to find how to do it...For help with finding functionality, get the "StarOffice Companion by Haugland and Jones", it's a great book, well laid out and easy to use, tells just what you need to do, and with a good index (why is that so rare??) so you can find what you wanted). Frankly I feel free at last. I'll not be using any of micky$loth's overpriced "you have to buy your bug fixes, and then we'll make it incompatible with your friends with the old version" software any more. I'm running StarOffice on Windows XP right now but, I think I might have to check out Linux, as I understand StarOffice runs on that too.
58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absurd to pay MS prices; StarOffice opens MS Office, WP,
This review is from: StarOffice 6.0 (CD-ROM)
It's new, yes. Does that make it bad? No. Give it a try, or download the free OpenOffice.org version.StarOffice is more compatible with MS Office than MS Office. Try opening a Word 95 file with Word XP. Then try it with StarOffice. StarOffice is worth it if only for the drawing program, which is excellent, easy to learn and use, and exports to not only GIF and JPG but SVG, EPS, and a host of other formats. StarOffice opens WordPerfect files, on Windows. If you're looking to switch from WordPerfect, here is your chance. Word files litter the Internet; college students are required to submit Word files often for simple essays; elementary schools publish lunch menus in Word. Government agencies publish calculation forms for the public in Excel. StarOffice is particularly appropriate for people who simply want to create some documents, and read other people's documents, and not pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege to read what ought to be in an open, nonproprietary file format. StarOffice costs as much as you're going to spend on a sweater for your mother at Christmas. What you'd spend on Microsoft Office would cover two of her car payments. If you're one of the many people who doesn't have money to throw away, and you're looking for the value that a product actually provides instead of just continuing the same expensive habit, then you're going to be delighted by StarOffice.
40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sliced bread had a nice long ride, but now it's over,
This review is from: StarOffice 6.0 (CD-ROM)
This is software the way it should be. No paying a month's rent just so you can read Word files, no paying a wad just so you can get a spreadsheet to do your taxes, in a format your accountant will accept.It's not perfectly usable yet and the doc included is limited at best. But you know, with the hundreds of dollars I've saved, I have enough left over to buy a book, and with the hundreds of dollars I've saved I can pay myself for a couple hours of getting to know the program. Its open source and free version, OpenOffice.org, is of course an even better deal. Download it today, use it today, distribute it if you want and all for free with *no* license restrictions. Here are a few things I like in the program, in addition to its' ideological coolness: ********You can edit the source of any document.**************** Any StarOffice or openoffice.org file unzips with Winzip or whatever. You get a styles.xml file, content.xml file, etc. You can go into each file, change paths to graphics or delete bunches of old styles, or whatever. Then zip everything back up again and there's your document, reflecting the changes you made. Good wizards. They call them AutoPilots, but whatever, they're wizards. It's pretty easy to put together a mail merge letter, business cards, labels, presentations, web pages with multicolumn etc formatting, etc. You can connect to standard databases. Just go to the data source connection set up window and pick Access, Oracle, etc. The documentation isn't much on the syntax but the StarOffice Companion tells you the syntax to use. The spreadsheet tool is pretty good. Still a 32,000 row limitation but you know, most of us will be able to keep our enthusiasm in check and stick to 31,500 rows. Good DataPilot wizard thing to bring in data from a data source, and create automatic total fields at the same time. The drawing program is amazing. If you don't have a vector drawing program that you're absolutely happy with, get StarOFfice or Openoffice.org just for the drawing program. I was blown away. The 3D and Visio type features were a real surprise. So that's my take on it. Be prepared to spend a little time, rather than a lot of money, getting started with this, and you'll be happy.
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