“StarOffice 8, the latest version of Sun’s inexpensive, cross-platform office productivity suite, stands up better than ever next to Microsoft’s market-leading Office in terms of features, extensibility and compatibility. In eWeek’s tests of StarOffice 8, we were pleased with the suite’s word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database functions. In addition, we experienced generally good results opening and creating Microsoft Office-formatted documents with StarOffice.”
seeing as staroffice and openoffice are nearly the same, either the zdnet guy
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=101
or the eweek guy
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1864273,00.asp
don’t know what they’re talking about.
A perfect example mainstream ITs unfounded bias against anything stamped OpenSource.
Apparently you missed this:
“StarOffice’s wholly open-source sibling, OpenOffice.org, is available free of charge, comes bundled with most Linux distributions and is completely compatible with StarOffice. A special report focusing on migration issues and OpenOffice.org 2.0 will appear in a forthcoming issue of eWEEK.”
Well… thanks! Your zdnet link is eye opener for Linux and OO guys. I’m using Linux for past 5 years and using StartOffice-OpenOffice for the same time. You do make sence. Only fast is… I’ve 35 machines running with Linux and OO and for Free!
Our needs are fully satisfied within the OpenOffice. I really feel 99% people dont even use 50% of the total features given by the Office suites yet they want better suite! It does surprise me most of the time. I dont mind spending few more seconds in waiting to open office suite than paying $ to MS!
The point here is OO & Linux in terms of Memory usage and Speed are way behind but in terms of Cost saving, Availability across platforms they are miles ahead of MS! Its upto you to make a choice!
And i am pleased with the reults.
Had StarOffice 7 installed before upgrading to 8.
The installation (now without the annoying “net” installation for every user on the computer)was good and fast and the software works as it should.
Nice to see OpenDocument format as standard format.
… By the time Office 12 comes out, it will look hopelessly outdated. However it remains to be seen how the new changes to Office 12 will work, so looking more traditonal could very well be a big selling point for the product.
And the new version office 12 will sell as well as office 2003.
You may be right. For the last few revisions of Word, it seems that the biggest selling point was the menues were rearranged to “help you be more productive” and that was enough to entice people to buy (of course, in 2003 they added the color speedbump looking thing for all your menu icons to ride on – yay! Where’s my checkbook?)
I’ve seen the new interface. I don’t know if it will be enough to entice people to upgrade though. It reminds me of a high-gloss version of Delphi’s IDE.
outdated? Why? I’m sick of programs being compared to MSFT’s and I’m sick of pressure on supporting their formats. Worry about open format so they have to worry about supporting it instead. Change focus iow.
He was talking about the user interface.
still only when compared to MSFT office. Why does everything have to be a clone is what I’m getting at?
Why must it continue to be the template?
Because all of the StarOffice based suites are direct rip offs of Microsoft Office, so of course they’re going to be compared.
Does this mean Openoffice.org 2 could be regarded as production quality? Or do the codebases differ beyond the proprietary extensions?
Am i the only one out there that can’t stand the newest MS Office 2003. I find it slower than previous versions, buggy as hell (especially MS Access), and some features just don’t work. Also where is PDF export!!
Outlook 2003 is soo crowded my emails are small little wedge in the middle of about a billion options I don’t care about. Is this really progress?
Well… you can kinda change the GUI however you please. Toolbars can be moved around, completely removed, different ways to layout the panes, etc…
You should try it sometime before complaining about it.
Just about everywhere I’ve worked has lots of VBA/Macro code tied to their business process in Microsoft Office; so just switching nilly-willy over to StarOffice/OpenOffice.org isn’t something that happens over a weekend.
I can give an example of one thing that I had written for Pfizer a few years back. Their Exchange server has a mailbox that’s monitored for incoming mail. It’s used by all their satellite offices for Adverse Effects documents (you take Viagra and the erection doesn’t go away, etc). When an e-mail comes in with the Word Document attached, the VBA code goes in to action. The Attachment is detached and saved in Documentum. Next, a binary read is done of the Word Document to extract the needed data and this data is entered into a database. This is just one of many automations that are accomplished with VBA/Macro’s at Pfizer. We have tons more here at Turner, I’ve also seen a lot of The Home Depot, Cox Communications, etc. There would be a lot involved in replacing Office. The Suites need to do more than just be able to open a Microsoft document to get a lot of places to switch over. Now, home users and little Mom-and-Pop places, it’s probably ideal for them.
Just about everywhere I’ve worked has lots of VBA/Macro code tied to their business process in Microsoft Office; so just switching nilly-willy over to StarOffice/OpenOffice.org isn’t something that happens over a weekend.
StarOffice 8 supports VBA macros. Might want to read up on details before making generalized statements.
Yes, but there’s a difference. You notice in my example I said that an Outlook mailbox was being monitored, which then fired off Word. Most other ones I’ve seen grab data from Excel/Word and place it in Access or Sql Server. You can’t just cut and paste that VBA code into StarOffice and expect Calc to start up instead of Excel, or Writer to start up instead of Word; the code is pretty specific. It may be simple changes, then again it may not be. My point was too many people think it’s just a simple drop in replacement whereas for a lot of companies there would be redevelopment of a lot of stuff.
You notice in my example I said that an Outlook mailbox was being monitored, which then fired off Word.
Oh my God…..
You can’t just cut and paste that VBA code into StarOffice and expect Calc to start up instead of Excel, or Writer to start up instead of Word; the code is pretty specific.
Well you adapt it, ot better yet, keep this away from Office and write a more resilient system to handle it.
My point was too many people think it’s just a simple drop in replacement whereas for a lot of companies there would be redevelopment of a lot of stuff.
Look, in my experience, if you go in and ask these organisations they are going to want some redevelopment done anyway because their business environment simply won’t be working at all. They won’t tell you that, but that will be the case behind the scenes – guaranteed.
In many cases what you’ll find, if you actually ask, is that many people are manually, by hand, working around these VBA systems when they simply don’t work reliably enough or they don’t do exactly what they want when their business processes change slightly and you don’t know about it. Result? Absolute chaos and a god-awful mess someone eventually has to clean up.
For SUN this is a long term project; not an instant 5 minute ‘screw-u to Microsoft’; there is already work on an Outlook like clone which will be based off the OO.org SAL. Once that Outlook clone is done, hopefully there will be a greater level of work by SUN to make all the components sing in harmony.
If there is one thing Microsoft does well, its ensuring that their products all sing together nicely – forget the fact that its a hit and miss with third parties; if you’re an all Microsoft house, and use Microsofts products for every facit of the business process, Office + Windows + SQL and a few other things are a great piece of work for all concerned – its just too bad that SUN and many other vendors don’t get it.
Oh, and just a side issue; SUN would have been better of purchasing Corel; porting Wordperfect Suite to Solaris, using Mainsoft’s windows to UNIX porting libraries – it would have given SUN a rock solid database, a word processor that almost everyone has used at one point in their life, and as for Quatro Pro and Presentations, both can easily hold a candle to Excel and PowerPoint – true, the PIM with Corel Wordperfect Suite is a little lacking in some regards, but with that being said, with a little TLC, it could get up to the same level of features as Outlook.
SUN would have been better of purchasing Corel; porting Wordperfect Suite to Solaris, using Mainsoft’s windows to UNIX porting libraries – it would have given SUN a rock solid database, a word processor that almost everyone has used at one point in their life, and as for Quatro Pro and Presentations, both can easily hold a candle to Excel and PowerPoint
So true. I don’t know what was Corel’s price tag back in those days, but it sure would have been a better acquisition target than Cobalt.
I have used QPro a lot under DOS, and still think it’s an excellent spreadsheet program. I have used WordPerfect Suite – Win 3.1 – and was extremely impressed with the package. I have no clue how portable it is, however. I remember that WP 8 was ported to Linux, and it was way too buggy. It had nice features, yes, but the bugs made it considerably less pleasant to use.
So true. I don’t know what was Corel’s price tag back in those days, but it sure would have been a better acquisition target than Cobalt.
IIRC, it was worth around 1.1billion – but then again, they have a pretty good portfolio, couple what with the fact that Cobalt, in reality was only purchased with paper money – no real money was actually lost in the transaction, Corel would have been a better deal – imagine a sexy Opteron Workstation loaded with Solaris x86 + GNOME + Corel Wordperfect Suite.
Good workstations from SUN, running mainstream applications that would not only boost traditional markets, but help push their thin client technology.
I have used QPro a lot under DOS, and still think it’s an excellent spreadsheet program. I have used WordPerfect Suite – Win 3.1 – and was extremely impressed with the package. I have no clue how portable it is, however. I remember that WP 8 was ported to Linux, and it was way too buggy. It had nice features, yes, but the bugs made it considerably less pleasant to use.
WP8 was probably more a biproduct of the fact that Linux has bugginess too, and that the WP8 was designed to be as portable as possible – WP8 on other platforms was pretty stable.
Mainsoft would have provided native, Win32 compatible libraries without all the drawbacks of emulation/ABI like wine provides – stability should also be very high in that Mainsofts product is derived directly off the Windows code base – not a hit and miss shot like wine currently is; you could call Mainsofts software the Carbon of the UNIX world – not quite native, but native enough to run the applications at a good speed and allowing vendors to port their applications without requiring a total re-write.
Wouldn’t you say it was a lot like the move from office MACROS to the VBA it is today.Plus, with every verison of MS office functionality is changed to the point where it is a crap shoot if your VBA will work properly or not.
From your post ascheinberg:
StarOffice 8 supports VBA macros. Might want to read up on details before making generalized statements.
From the article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1864273,00.asp
In addition, while StarOffice 8 can be extended through macros and scripting, much like Microsoft Office can, these extensions won’t migrate to Microsoft Office without being rewritten. However, StarOffice ships with a Macro Migration wizard that will aid in the migration of Microsoft Visual Basic macros to the StarOffice Basic macro language.
Maybe you should should have read the article yourself before making an assine reply? I only madethis reply since I can’t mod you down. We have been trolled. We have lost. Have a nice day.
When an e-mail comes in with the Word Document attached, the VBA code goes in to action. The Attachment is detached and saved in Documentum. Next, a binary read is done of the Word Document to extract the needed data and this data is entered into a database.
Bloody hell, you think that’s a good idea?! Waiting for an e-mail with an attachment (and it could be anything really) sent arbitrarily to some mailbox? What happens when the format of this Word document changes, as everything in these companies inevitably does? Nobody, under any circumstances, should be sending any e-mails with attachments arbitrarily, where as an end result, data is added into a database. It is simply asking for trouble.
My experience of this in every large university, educational and business environments is one of a tale of disaster, disoriented, disjointed and uncentralised management making maintenance and support, well, totally unsupportable. Maybe you should bring these companies into the 21st century and create a web based front-end for doing this like every other sane person has been doing for the best part of ten years? It ensures much better centralised management, it’s much easier to support and change and you can make sure that data validation is up to date and is actually done and the data is complete.
There would be a lot involved in replacing Office. The Suites need to do more than just be able to open a Microsoft document to get a lot of places to switch over.
No actually, it’s high time people started coming into the 21st century and designing proper and professional systems for these companies rather than pretending they can knock something something up in VBA. The amount of organisations I have managed to save from these VBA pretenders and this sort of total disaster are inumerable.
Now, home users and little Mom-and-Pop places, it’s probably ideal for them.
You’ve accurately described the sorts of systems you’ve been involved with, and the sorts of scenarios where VBA should be completely restricted to. Business processes should go absolutely nowhere near Microsoft Office. Sorry to be harsh, but I hope the companies you’ve done this sort of work for are suffering extreme pain as we speak.
Replacing Office is easy. Get your business processes away from this stuff, leave your documents as documents and let your business processes be handled by proper, professional and resilient systems elsewhere. Many organisations have all they need to do this, and those that don’t are currently suffering the sort of hell they will want to get out of if you just simply ask them.
Also, it sounds to me that resorting Microsoft’s VBA support for doing something that is clearly a form of server data-processing is absolutely the most horrid way to go about it.
It probably only made sense because the only reliable reader of MS Word files is, well, MS Word. Microsoft doesn’t even provide programmers with usable libraries to read MS Word files outside of VBA. So, people are resorted to this nonsense.
Typical in the series of Microsoft scandals of keeping file formats and architectures closed. Too bad so much IT infrastructure is built on this ignorance.
Well it will serve Pfizer right when this Heath Robinson cobbled together joke falls apart. As someone who works in the Pharamceutical Industry I know how tightly documentation is regulated, I hope the FDA gives them hell when it fails and they can’t retrieve large chunks of documentation.
This seems quite insane.
There is no flexibility in this model.
Lots of dependancies, and no room to move.
If they ever got together, man, the whole world would change…
The source code base is such a behemoth and so sphagettified that its really a herculean effort to keep it under control.
Competetion is good! if it eventually brings the price of MS Office down to resonable levels.
I started using OO2 build 129 on my Ubuntu at work doing some documentation, first I created a document in Office 2000 and then opened it in OO2 and continued working on it. When I reopened it in MS Office there were issues with readability, things did not look ok.
The compatibility with MS Office is the single most important thing if OO2 will succeed since most of companies and organizations use MS Office. All other things like exporting to PDF and Flash are not as important.
How about spending the tremendous resources going into OOo on something new and groundbreaking, instead of this outdated, crappy office suite? Or instead maybe building upon smaller, better (cross-platform) projects like GNOME Office.
Abiword and Gnumeric are far smaller and far faster than OOo, and if OpenOffice’s resources went into improving GNOME Office, you’d actually see some changes, rather than slow fixes to an enormous, slow, and ancient codebase. I still don’t see why people are so excited by OpenOffice: It’s not as good as MS Office now and it won’t be with this sluggish development pace.
It’s the same reason you see so much open-source development effort go into Mozilla/Firefox rather than the smaller, faster open source projects (Konqueror, for example). OOo has a great deal of media hype and started off mostly functional (being based on StarOffice) just as Mozilla did.
What about Wordperfect? Lotus Smartsuite? Textmaker? Thinkfree?
If it is true that Star Office 8 is just a rebranding of the current state of Open Office I think SUN should be declared criminals.
Seriously to call the curent Open Office production quality is a joke. I use ite and I like it, but I wouldnt dare to let anyone I know compare it to MSOffice. It’s BETA, and won’t be stable enough for a final release in at LEAST 6 months.
Seriously to call the curent Windows production quality is a joke. It’s BETA, and won’t be stable enough for a final release in at LEAST 6 years.
StarOffice 8 is not a snapshot of current OO. It’s much more conservative. (Plus it has a few non-opensource features that are irrelevant to this discussion.)
Don’t get me wrong, I like OpenOffice, and StarOffice, but the problem is the fact that they are all one application. I think it should be split down into seperate programs that use less resources.
As for GNOME Office, it’s nice but:
1. It’s not Cross-Platform (except AbiWord)
2. Some of the components are tied so closely into Gnome that it adds hundreds of extra packages to install those tiny little applications.
I have been paying attention to the Office software available for Linux. Currently, the only Office software that would be appealing to a business would be Star Office, OpenOffice, of if you could still get WordPerfect Office for Linux.
Personally, I think the companies pushing for Linux as their next business model should start porting some of their software that is no longer *hot* on windows over. IBM Owns Lotus, imagine SmartSuite for Linux, or even something similar to the OS/2 Productivity suite.
Look at the popularity of Wine! There is a demand for these applications on Linux, Photoshop runs on Wine because Walt Disney had a demand for it on Linux.
Windows became popular because it made a few killer apps easier to use (Lotus 1-2-3, Word Perfect, etc.) If Linux had some killer apps to pull it along like Windows that businesses adapted as a “must have” application, then it would rocket along like it hasn’t so far.
In Conclusion, StarOffice is nice, but companies and developers should wake up, and rather than compete with existing applications and play catch up, they should focus on making something ground breaking.
It would be nice for people to remember that OpenOffice.org no longer relies on Adabase; OpenOffice.org now has a database of its own, in its own right.
I am quite satisfied with the performance and GUI of StarOffice 8 or OOo2 on Windows. But the Linux version is a big disappoinment. It runs much slower than Windows version and the GTK GUI is not very polished and looks so unpro. It’d be nice if OOo has same pure GTK2 GUI and peformance like AbiWord.
Hi there !
I am wondering if the next MS Office version will support Open Office and Star Office native formats
If so, MS Office 12 will be the next reference in that business area
If not, why loose the time on an Office Suite that cannot support such formats ?
Well, on some distributions, OpenOffice has been candified.
Try Novell´s version of OOO2, it is really nicer to look at.
OOo interface looks hideous. Like working with Word circa Office 95/97.
and am I the only person that thinks that an update to OOo shouldn’t involve installing a completely new version.
And letting me download the office components I might actually use and NOT the ones I know I wont. I’m only really ever going to use the word processor, but I have to download the whole suite initially and then for every upgrade. Rubbish
from a technical point of view, as I’ve read from the OOo dev mailing list,
it is possible to have an alternative UI for the very same OOo engine, as almost everything is componentized.
IBM Lotus Workplace did this, they have a web interface that wrapped up OOo UNO objects. So you got office suite funcitionalities that intregrated into mail, calendar, and collaboration suite. (the only “not nice thing” here is, IBM didn’t contribute anything in that area back (note: there’s no legal obligation here. just only moral.)
There’re also discussions about using XUL as a UI framework for OOo.
This year OOoCon 2005 (currently running right now) features a paper “OpenOffice.org and XUL – Embedding Gecko in OOo”
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2005/schedule/thursday_develo…
also few discussions in GSL mailing list
http://gsl.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=1610
to sum it up,
if one happy with the OOo functionalities, but not its UI, one can try to build a new one.
(it can be GUI, CLI, web service, or anything)
Star Office sucks, it’s like the poor man’s version of office.
I don’t mind open sauce, when it is done right, but Star Office is lame and has always been lame.
Office 12 is the only game in town that I care about.
I would rather spend that money, then buying food stamp “MS Office wannabe” software.