why to use staroffice ?

[gagan sharma]

Will someone tell me that why to use staroffice when all its features are offered by MS Office ?

hope to get my query answered very soon!
Thx!
gagan sharma

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[Anonymous]

If you already own MS Office, then the decision is more of a matter of preference. I use Star Office because it is free and my new computer only came with Works ( a dubious claim for that particurlar package ). SO has been great so far. I have used the calc (the spreadsheet program) a lot with great success.

[Chris Stehno]

As the previous post says ... if you already have Office, you have a choice. But given the choice I always choose StarOffice. It has all the features of Office with a much friendlier interface and tighter integration. It will also read and write in all of the Office file formats.
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Chris Stehno (Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform)

[Solveig Laura Haugland]

Originally posted by gagan sharma:
Will someone tell me that why to use staroffice when all its features are offered by MS Office ?

hope to get my query answered very soon!
Thx!
gagan sharma

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Hi there,
There are many reasons to use StarOffice:
- The UI is similar to Word, so you don't have much initial learning curve
- It runs on Solaris and Linux
- It's got graphics built in, both drawing (for EPS or similar output) or raster graphics, creating or editing something pixel-based
- It's got database capabilities built in
- Not only is it free, you get away from the costly upgrade stuff that MS is into
- Like the other folks say, it opens EVERYTHING. Wordstar, AmiPro, stuff you've never heard of. You can open MS Word or Excel or Powerpoint files and save back out to that format, too.
- Pretty groovy animation capabities in the PowerPoint equivalent, as well as animated gifs and marquees for your Web pages
It can take a little while to get used to, but yeah, it's pretty darned robust for a free package. And Sun's very much behind it; it's featured permanently on the main Sun page.
That's the quick summary, at least. Sorry for the slow reply.
solveig

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author of:
StarOffice Companion