This past week, I tested StarOffice, from Sun, Inc.
A question posed to me by my brother Greg, and a couple of responders to my blog offline: would I recommend StarOffice, and under what conditions?
While I have issues with document fidelity in the conversion of Microsoft Office documents, I have no problem recommending the applications suite as long as projected usage is within the narrow confines of conditions I shall declare below.
Apart from that, at about $70 per user, it is inexpensive, though not in any way a cheapo. It is fast to launch, and handles conversions speedily.
It is also a Sun-branded product. Apart from their forays into begging for governmental assistance in competing, Sun Microsystems – forgive me, J Schwartz, I cannot think of it as anything else – does create pretty good software, and excellent hardware, as Solaris would attest. I have every confidence in their customer service and support, and continued development of their products.
Conditions I would recommend StarOffice
A new company without any inventory of Microsoft Office documents.
A client moving from an other-than-Microsoft Office suite, such as WordPerfect, Corel Office, Lotus, etc.
A home user who does not have Microsoft Office.
In all instances listed above, my first option would be an unequivocal recommendation of Microsoft Office as the first choice, defaulting only to StarOffice if the client cannot afford Microsoft Office.
I would not, under any circumstance, recommend any office suite, including StarOffice, to any client who has a sizeable inventory of Microsoft Office documents. I would decline the commission for that project immediately.
Finally, it would go without saying, that usage of StarOffice would not be supported by our employees.
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OpenOffice is free
StarOffice is pretty much the same as its open source cousin openoffice.org. So you can get it for free from OpenOffice.org. Actually, Google Pack offers StarOffice for free (and yes, it is the same StarOffice without any difference from the $70 version).
Essentially you get professional Sun support for the money you pay for StarOffice. OpenOffice.org or the Google Pack version doesn't come with support.
OpenOffice is also a great alternative
The point about OpenOffice being free is a good start, and the points about Google Pack offer of StarOffice is another nice pointer. What needs to be addressed though, is the idea that there is a steep learning curve to either product, or such stringent restraints that Mr. Obeto recommends.
If you can read the help document, or better yet do a search for OpenOffice support or training, there are many resources available. OpenOffice is not just for techies or home users, it works very well in the professional environment.
The allusion that Mr. Obeto makes to someone that has a lot of MS documents having problems converting, I have hundreds collected over the years, with various versions of MS being used. So far, there has only been one document I haven't been able to convert without making manual adjustments. So, once again Mr Obeto has made insinuations that StarOffice has failings in conversions, as well as the usual jab at OpenOffice.
I will say that it's good to see something positive from Mr. Obeto about something other than Microsoft, I just wish that there was less insinuation and more fact in the blog. I know, tough to do when you're business is about selling MS.
OpenOffice.org is certainly a viable alternative
I'm the Director of IT Operations for a small (~30 person) company that is entirely MS-centric. We used to have a mix of Linux and Windows, but the business shifted over the past few years to the point where there are only three Linux boxes left and two of those are pending retirement. (I myself come from a UNIX/Linux background and use it for my own needs, but I'm a realist and that just wasn't where the company was going.)
We do software development, pretty much all C#/.Net. Everyone has Windows and Office on their desktop, and a lot of MS-format documents are passed around.
But I'm running OpenOffice.org on my desktop - and no one seems to notice. I trade documents with people using MS-Office all the time - both within and without the company. I use it mostly as an experiment to see how well it works, but also because I've been using it outside of work since around StarOffice 5, which I used on Linux. I still had MS-Office on Windows box at the time. But by the time OpenOffice.org hit 1.0, I switched fully to using OOo.
In all those years I have only had a handful of issues with document conversion, and that's usually due to someone larding up an MS-Office document with macros and embedded scripting. And in the latest revisions of OOo the UI is close enough to MS-Office that many people can switch without a lot of pain.
For a while now I've been actively encouraging people I know to *not* waste money on MS-Office when buying a new PC. To give OOo a try first, and only buy MS-Office if they really feel the need after using OOo - as far as I know, no one who has tried this has gone back to buy MS-Office.