http://www.osnews.com/story/11999/Interview_Iyer_Venkatesan_StarOffice_Product_Manager Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 23 May 2013 17:57:24 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?36649 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36649 Why am I going to pay $99 for a product which is already free (OO.org), just to get 60 days free support? Both of them are the same products, plus, if I already have Microsoft Office 95 and up installed, there is no need to migrate to either OO.org or Star Office. Mon, 26 Sep 2005 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36657 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36657 I already have Microsoft Office 95 and up installed, there is no need to migrate to either OO.org or Star Office.

C'mon, that's just silly. First off, Office 95 formats aren't even compatible with 97+.

Secondly, I think it's clear that it's the commercial sector that StarOffice is geared towards - and that OpenOffice.org is aimed at a home user with computer experience.

Then again, I'm pretty sure you're just trolling. Mon, 26 Sep 2005 22:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36667 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36667 Why am I going to pay $99 for a product which is already free (OO.org)

You may not, but your employer would. You'd be amazed at the number of places that won't let you install something downloaded for free, but would buy the same thing in a shrinkwraped package. Mon, 26 Sep 2005 23:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (puddleglum) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36681 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36681 Does this render poorly for everyone? I am running Firefox 1.5 Beta on Win 2000 (I'm at work, or I'd be using Linux). Mon, 26 Sep 2005 23:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36695 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36695 I use StarOffice and I'm a home user. It IS the same code as OpenOffice, but the "extras" are worth it...and it's easy to keep updated with patches throughout the life cycle. StarOffice 7 was a pleasure, so I have no problem shelling out a nominal amount for this fine office suite. Combine the provided clip-art and other things with templates (and add OpenClipArt too, if you like) there is plenty here that OpenOffice doesn't provide out of the box.

Now with the Open Document Format, things are even better. So, there are some people willing to spend a little for a piece of software...and the comment about Office 95 is pretty stupid. Some people DUMPED MS Office altogether because of the irritations and problems with it. Mon, 26 Sep 2005 23:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bobmeister) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36699 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36699 Been using OOo2 (1.9.129) and if SO isn't any better they'll soon get customers running back to MS.

It's just full of glitches. Small things, but irritating. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 00:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36702 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36702 Yeah...I've seen some bugs and I have been using it since 1.9.79 or so...but all of the bugs that I have seen have disappeared in my current 1.9.125, but do you really think people will "run" back to Microsoft? Just curious why you say that. My wife has been using this since StarOffice 7 and she is now using OpenOffice 1.9 until we get StarOffice 8 and she likes it BETTER and she has been using MS Office for years prior to that. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 00:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bobmeister) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36708 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36708 Assuming pepole are checking out OO just for the sake of it. I think theyll find no compelling reason to stick with it. And the behavior is sufficiently dissimilar to MSO to get a feeling of bugginess

This is what I've found yet:

1. Slow rendering and rendering glitches (could be attributed to X/gtk and drivers though...)

2. Autofill in calc doesn't work as Excel. In excel if you autofill a single value it's repeated.

3. Pivot tables are called Data Pilot. Not a bug, but still an issue if the user thinks the feature is missing.

4. Enabling and Disabling of autofilter is confusing and buggy.

5. It's possible to remove the autofilter widgets by selecting a nonmatching query and not having a header row.

6. Data Pilot has a inferior query abillities.

There are more, but as you notice it's just a rather limited part of the whole suite I've had experience with jet. If the rest of it is similar... Tue, 27 Sep 2005 00:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36725 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36725 Perhaps the OSNews staff should buy StarOffice for writing their articles. I'm sure its spellchecker can suggest the correct word with which to replace "compatility" in the third sentence of this article.

Really, what is so hard about writing articles in a spell-checked application? Even Gedit can do that! OSNews is turning into Slashdot. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 01:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bnonn) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36726 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36726 OO.org 2.0 is beta testing, so of course it'll have issues. Have you filled out a bug report so that your concerns may be resolved by release time? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (g2devi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36730 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36730 And StarOffice 8 is based on that, then what does that make StarOffice? And people accuse MS of releasing products that are still beta Tue, 27 Sep 2005 01:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36731 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36731 I use Open Office at home and I just want to thank say thank you to Sun. They get bashed a lot so I thought I'd give them an atta-boy when I had the chance. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 01:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36737 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36737 "Autofill in calc doesn't work as Excel. In excel if you autofill a single value it's repeated. "

So it works correctly then. In excel, autofilling a cell formatted as text that has a number stored, increases the number by one, and autofilling a cell formatted as number repeats the cell. What's the ***ing logic in that? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 02:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (whitespiral) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36740 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36740 Been using OOo2 (1.9.129) and if SO isn't any better they'll soon get customers running back to MS.

It's just full of glitches. Small things, but irritating.

It's a beta in case you didn't know. That is why when you launch the program, it says "OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta". In-case you weren't aware, betas are released so people can find bugs and report them to the vendor. So, since that is the point of a beta, here's a thought, submit a bug report and maybe, just maybe, those bugs might get fixed!!! :-O What a thought eh? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 02:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36767 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36767 If they ever got together around promoting OpenOffice, it'd be 'say bye bye' time for Microsoft. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 03:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36775 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36775 If they ever got together around promoting OpenOffice, it'd be 'say bye bye' time for Microsoft.

Not quite, for the simple reason some people out there don't trust non-Microsoft software. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36776 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36776 I have had a very good experience working with Office 2k3 and I am definitely looking forward to Office 12 to come out. It looks pretty intriguing to me. Right now I am using 1.9.125 and so far it has crashed on me only twice and I have filed the bug reports. But other than those crashes I have had no probs none whatsoever especially using Writer and swapping back and forth between Word and ODT formats. I think its a great suite but nowhere near as polished or as fast as MSOffice. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 05:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (suryad) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36779 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36779 Notwithstanding their overwhelming usage of Google, a non-Microsoft product. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 05:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36784 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36784 Notwithstanding their overwhelming usage of Google, a non-Microsoft product.

Yes, because the Google search engine is a piece of software you install on your computer, much like OpenOffice.org and MS Office. [/sarcasm] Tue, 27 Sep 2005 05:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rm6990) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36796 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36796 It is still not posible to run 64-bit OOo or SO on 64-bit Linux distro's. 64-bit only works on Solaris.

But SO/OOo are still the best office suites available. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 06:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36797 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36797 So, since that is the point of a beta, here's a thought, submit a bug report and maybe, just maybe, those bugs might get fixed!!! :-O What a thought eh?

Yeah, sure. In some 5 years, maybe, if OOo is still around. I have some 4 years old issues reported that still are not fixed. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36800 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36800 Free software(aka Open source software) is not about giving software away for free.
Software development costs money. Somebody has to pay the programmers.
Sun employs alot of people to work on open office. If they didn't make money from selling Sun Office then openoffice would probably not be in the functional state that it is.
Although I think the licencing of Sun office is unethical.
- Jessta Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36808 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36808 > Although I think the licencing of Sun office is unethical.

Errrm, ¿you mean the GPL? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 09:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36813 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36813 It's probably isn't logical at all. But MS Excel feels like a better mind reader than OOo. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36816 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36816 Actually Free Software isn't known as Open Source software at all.

Open Source is about the techincal and economical superiority in the development model. This is what ESR oulines in the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Free Software is about the moral and ethical right to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. This is why FSF created the GPL and GNU to promote it. Notice dependency there, GNU was created to promote GPL not the other way around.

Two completely diffrent beasts. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36817 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36817 I wasn't bashing OOo I simply state that I hope SO is better. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36819 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36819 If i get irritated enough. Just because SUN released SO as open source doesn't mean I'm employed in thier testing department working for zero salary... Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36930 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36930 If i get irritated enough. Just because SUN released SO as open source doesn't mean I'm employed in thier testing department working for zero salary...

----------Well if it bothers you so much, use something else. No one is holding a gun to your head to use betas of any software. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36940 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36940 why can we not vote you down ?
why do your posts come in at level 5 ? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (captain_knobjockey) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36958 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36958 Why are you trying to mod him down? Could it be because you are a KNOWN TROLL with a negative comment average??? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 16:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Minty Fresh) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36960 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36960 I wasnt trying to mod him down, I was looking at his comments scores. they are all 5


and you call me a troll ?

how dare you etc etc etc hahaha Tue, 27 Sep 2005 16:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (captain_knobjockey) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36963 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36963 yeah, and Thom too. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 16:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Whats That There) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36967 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36967 and last I looked I was not negative... but you were... TROLL ! Tue, 27 Sep 2005 16:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (captain_knobjockey) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?36984 http://www.osnews.com/thread?36984 have anyone checked OO or SO memory consumption. It is impossible to run on older computers. It takes forever to load also. Now dont push me to buy more memory because it is cheap! I can run MSO with same memory very efficiently.

my big question is will you risk an important presentation or report of being not formated well or glitches(minor to linux geeks) in front of your boss or a valuable meeting or conference
or
you would rely on MSO for such important presentations.??? Tue, 27 Sep 2005 17:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?37195 http://www.osnews.com/thread?37195 It's one of the few perks of being OSNews staff. Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?37292 http://www.osnews.com/thread?37292 "And StarOffice 8 is based on that, then what does that make StarOffice? And people accuse MS of releasing products that are still beta "

Actually, the exact opposite is true. The fact that StarOffice 8 finally shipped is very, very good news for OO users. Because both OpenOffice and StarOffice are owned and developed by Sun, Sun has a policy of releasing StarOffice first. Then in a few weeks or a month, Sun moves OpenOffice into stable and makes an OpenOffice release. What this means is that OpenOffice 2 stable will be released any day now. Wed, 28 Sep 2005 04:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?37471 http://www.osnews.com/thread?37471 I can run MSO with same memory very efficiently

I think that's because Windows has already pre-loaded much of the stuff needed for MSO and SO/OOo being multi-platform has to supply its own.
But I agree it'd be nice to see a smaller memory consumption in SO/OOo
An interresting thing would be to run MSO though Wine in linux and measure how much RAM MSO acctually uses.

my big question is will you risk an important presentation or report of being not formated well or glitches(minor to linux geeks) in front of your boss or a valuable meeting or conference or you would rely on MSO for such important presentations.???

Why would a presentation made in SO/OOo not be well formatted in front of your boss?
If it's made in MSO and presented in SO/OOo there might be minor layout differences, but surely you don't run a presentation of someone elses MSO document unrehersed (and unadjusted), do you?

- Peder Wed, 28 Sep 2005 14:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments