Originally posted by Angela Jessi:
star office?
Thanks,
Angela
Hi Angela,
It's a pretty darned complete office suite, not entirely different from Microsoft Office, that you can download from Sun's web site (
http://www.sun.com/staroffice) or buy from Amazon for, basically, a pittance. It's got a spreadsheet, wordprocessor, web page tool, drawing tool, database management tool, and a Powerpoint-like slide creation tool.
It's big thing is that it runs on Linux and Solaris as well as Windows; it's open source; it's targeted at the whole Open Development Spirit of the future thing; and as mentioned, of course, you can get it for a lot less than you'd expect to pay.
It reads and writes MS Office files really well; you can just open them and edit them in StarOffice, and save them in StarOffice or back to their original MS format. So you can use it along with MS or just switch immediately, whatever works. It also opens a pretty large list of formats: including graphics formats, it opens over 140 formats.
It's at version 5.2 right now; version 6.0 coming out sometime this winter, I hear.
If you've got anything of a 28.8 connection, the best thing to do is to just download it and give it a try. Or if you've got $40 or so to spare, you can get it at Compusa or Amazon or whatever. Knowledgebase and other resources are available off Sun's site, too.
LMK any other questions!
Solveig Haugland
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author of:
StarOffice Companion 
