StarOffice 6.0 Beta Available 465
Lumpish Scholar and 753 other people wrote in to let us know that Sun has released its beta of Star Office 6. CNET has a blurb about the release as well. I was hoping that Sun's site might be unclogged enough to try it out myself, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards today.
Office XP (Score:2, Troll)
Despite how much you might hate the company, this is one hell of a product. Launches in seconds, takes up scant amounts of ram, hasn't crashed yet. It's going to be a tough one to beat... especially since every area where it excels (no pun intended), Staroffice falls behind (what a hog!).
Whatever happened to it having been released open source? Where is GStarOffice with GTK+ widgets and Gnome integration? At least KOffice works well with the rest of the KDE apps...
Re:Office XP (Score:4, Informative)
See OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] for that one.
Re:Office XP (Score:5, Informative)
Someone mod this +1, Funny, please.
I'm running Office XP right now. Outlook is currently using 23M of RAM. Word is using 28M. (Windows 2000 + Office XP)
Word doesn't even have a file open, not even a blank file.
I don't count that as 'scant amounts'.
And it loads quick because that "Microsoft Office" icon in your startup menu preloads most of the thing during your boot/login process where you think it's normal for your disk to be thrashing itself apart.
Re:Office XP (Score:2, Informative)
I guess, if it worked for IE, why not Office?
Make your stuff *appear* to load faster, even though the slow part is at the beginning and consumes RAM even when inactive. Whee!
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
Re:Office XP (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
Re:Office XP (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that Office appears to launch almost instantanously, is that most of it was already loaded on bootup.
Just a clarification...
jf
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
Re:Office XP (Score:5, Interesting)
Install NT4. Note the available memory on bootup, before doing anything.
Install Office. Note the available memory after bootup, but before doing anything.
Do the math and wonder why JUST installing Office significantly decreased the available memory on bootup.
Start Office. Wonder why the used memory doesn't increase much at all. Hmmmmm.
A black box approach to be sure, but still very interesting.
jf
Oh, now this is priceless (Score:2, Interesting)
Previous versions of Office (Office 97) were pretty obvious due to the "office quickstart" icon that it places in the "startup" group. Later versions of Windows however, have a DLL cache which allows DLLs to be stored for preloading on bootup. That of course is why Windows machines take so *$%^#$ long to boot to a usable state and why 70% of a program's memory usage is not reported. Now to be fair, Unix TOP isn't much better. In order to get a reasonable view, you NEED some form of kernel hooks.
Re:Oh, now this is priceless (Score:2)
>icon that it places in the "startup" group.
>Later versions of Windows however, have a
>DLL cache which allows DLLs to be stored for
>preloading on bootup.
It seems to me that this was what I describing. Task Manager can really only be counted to tell you total system memory allocated
Your post appears to agree with what I was saying. Maybe you should re-read it?
jf
Re:Oh, now this is priceless (Score:2)
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
The reason that Office appears to launch almost instantanously, is that most of it was already loaded on bootup.
Just a clarification...
>>>>>>>>
Its all a moot point. On my computer (300MHz, 256MB), Office loads faster than KOffice, Office + Win2K uses about the same amount of RAM as KDE-2 + Linux, and Office runs a *lot* faster than KOffice. In KSpread, selecting multiple cells gets annoying because the system has to struggle to keep up with the selected area. In Excel, I can whip the selection area around all I want without the slightest "stickyness." I can resize Word or Excel as fast as I can move my mouse and the toolbars adjust to their new sizes with nary a hiccup. In KOffice (or any KDE app for that matter) I get an ugly rubber-band effect until the stupid widget set can catch up to my pointer. It drives me f**king INSANE!
BTW> While KDE-2 might be trash (speed-wise), has anyone switched to kernel 2.4.10 (with preempt patch)? It is AMAZING. Before, my mouse pointer used to stick whenever the disk was accessed or whenever Mozilla or Konq displayed a page. Now, not even compiling in the background can make it stick. Very, very nice. Props to the guys who worked on the AA patch, and also some kudos to AA for the new VM stuff!
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
jf
Staroffice 6.0 has a quickstart component (Score:2, Informative)
Office 2000 just as good (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of what was in it was already offered in Office 2000 (an underrated application suite) without the messy product activation. I recommend if you can get a copy of Office 2000, do so. It's very stable and runs like a champ.
Re:Office XP (Score:2)
SO (Score:2, Informative)
MS support... (Score:4, Interesting)
will the "more robust support" actually be decent enough for serious transfers between my Word documents? Also an important feature would be importing WordPerfect8 files. I have 100's of papers written in WP8 and for me to switch over would require filters for that. Anyone know anything about that?
I am going to try it as soon as I see some more information (the website was lacking what I really wanted to know).
I really hope I can ditch WP8 (although it is still the best for what I need) and run something more up-to-date
Enjoy the download
Re:MS support... (Score:2)
Re:MS support... (Score:3, Informative)
Before folks complain about what's missing or doesn't work well, it would pay to spend a few minutes actually installing the software and checking it out.
I've only used StarOffice for about half an hour so far, but it appears that the import/export filters are actually quite extensive. There is ALL KINDS of support for opening WordPerfect documents from ver 4.1 to ver 7. No, there's no ver 8 filter, but considering the length of the filter list, I'm assuming it's just a matter of time before they write it (there are filters for Xywrite and Wordstar, ferchrissakes).
Choose "Custom Install" or to to the setup app after installing and pick from their very extensive list of filters.
As for Word support, Star Office opened a bunch of very complex (but macro-free) documents for me without a burp. I was even able to set Word (and Excel) as my default file types for saving.
I say so far so good.
Simple answer: Simple text! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Simple answer: Simple text! (Score:2)
For me WP and Word documents will always include footnotes (Chicago styles are not easily converted in "text" format)
It would take me some serious time to send over a document in TXT and reformat it back to the way it needs to be to be acceptable.
I agree that people should not be sending around
What I think needs to happen (speaking of all these *fucking* recent monopolies on standards for files on the Internet -- Why not make a uniform document standard (no, not XML) that is mandated... Fuck MS and what they want to do. At least this way they will be forced to have fair competition (as no matter what document is released it will have to conform) and they basically will have to have better software to compete.
That's at least my worthless
Re:Simple answer: Simple text! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple answer: Simple text! (Score:2)
half of the arguments for plain text come from people who communicate solely in ASCII (even a small subset of ASCII at that). heck, you can even use ASCII for german, spanish, etc, languages, and currency representations for yen, etc. it is when you start talking about arabic and chinese and japanese full character sets where ASCII makes no sense.
notice i didn't say 'only when' because as the internet is a global entity, one hopes we have moved beyond the notion that ASCII is sufficient for any but the most trivial tasks.
of course, UTF-8 has its problems, but it beats the heck out of ASCII if you want to try to have a meaningful discussion with someone from another country (esp. middle/far east) who either does not speak or read english, or has something to express for which ASCII cannot suffice.
-sam
Re:Simple answer: Simple text! (Score:3)
I still use Emacs to read email in large part precisely for this reason. (Actually, Emacs can do HTML also, but I prefer not to.) Plain text messages are easier to read and deal with than their HTML counterparts. In fact, the only HTML-only messages I get are 100% of the time spam, and the only time someone sends me something that truly needs to be formatted, they send it as a separate Word attachment, which is easy enough to open.
Re:Simple answer: Simple text! (Score:2)
An easy doc - txt filter (Score:5, Funny)
$ strings WordFile.doc > WordFile.txt
$ less WordFile.txt
Problems with StarOffice (Score:2, Informative)
It's a hard battle (Score:3, Interesting)
And just as it gets good at opening MSOffice 97 docs. They change their document just enough to screw everyone over with the release of Office2000. And just as that starts to work they screw it up enough to not work with XP.
How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work???? I haven't been involved in the project, but I would really like to hear some feedback to why nobody can open freaking word documents. The TRUTH
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:2, Interesting)
and your point is? (Score:2)
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:3, Troll)
I believe it was back in the Halloween documents that they talked about "complex or subtle protocols and file formats" as a means for holding/gaining market share. You simply have to understand the goals in architecting and designing a protocol/format and parser. For most of us, it's simplicity and robustness. For Microsoft, add in the difficulty of reverse-engineering as perhaps more important than robustness, and clearly more important than simplicity. Lest you think that this is just a weapon against lil'old Linux users, don't forget that it's also a prime tool to keep their own users on the upgrade wheel. How often has it been said that the first MS Office user in an office eventually "forces" the whole office to upgrade, simply by passing around files in the latest default format.
The flip side of this is that the most robust things are generally also simple. IMHO it is inevitable that MS has had to trade off robustness in order to bring these difficult-to-reverse-engineer protocols and formats to market. In other words, it's deliberate foisting of second-rate goods counter to the customers' best interests.
Up until this Fall, the market has LOVED it, too.
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember one computer our office got last year, it installed 2000 by default and when I tried to remove it and install a site licensed copy of 97 it installed, but told me I had an invalid license whenever I tried to run any of its programs. I later tried to reinstall with a win98 disk. But I couldn't get the device drivers out of the install disk as it was locked to only be used as a reinstall everything disc from boot. Tried many things, never could get it working perfectly without just letting it be on office 2000. So as our site licenses offered us 2000 Prof for less then 50 dollars a peice I went ahead with the upgrade. I do like office 2000, but still embarrased that I let MS get the best of me
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you expect Microsoft to do anything less
How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work????
Parsing isn't that hard most of the difficulty comes in getting all the different OLE objects embedded in the document to work. Star/Openoffice, Koffice, AbiWord can all format the fonts, layouts, etc, quite well. The problem comes when you have an Excel Spreadsheet embedded in the word document as a table. Then each cell of the excel table is a word document. Then you gotta think about Macros, VB, etc.
Getting these things to work right is hard even for microsoft. Where I work now I have an Access database (I should've demanded they use something else, but they already had it installed everywhere) deployed to over 20 sites. I wrote the database in Access 97, but making it work in Access 2000 can be very tricky. Not only that, but at some places some of the Visual Basic Modules won't work in 97... welcome to my hell...
Anyway the point being, Microsoft has trouble in making THEIR office read previous MS Office files. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who doesn't have the specs to make an app capable of reading them.
MS Word format really does suck (Score:3, Interesting)
Word format not only is a complex binary format requiring documentation at multiple levels, it has significant undocumented portions. Worse yet, it allows executable content which can call on a lot of Windows-specific facilities. MS Word format really does suck, and that's not an accident: Microsoft likes it that way. The implications for users aren't good, though: vendor lock-in, viruses, and data that becomes inaccessible in a few years are only some of the problems resulting from the way MS Word stores its documents.
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with StarOffice is that it isn't Microsoft Office for Free [tm].
Re:It's a hard battle (Score:2)
Yeah, I remember when people said that about Word not replacing Word Perfect.
How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work????
Hard enough that even Microsoft doesn't always get it right.
Why not do it like OpenDWG? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mikael
.doc format (Score:2)
Re:.doc format (Score:2)
Then I gather you've never seen the .XLS (et al) specification. We used to have a joke about not going into it without taking a buddy to guard your back & pull you out if you started acting like you were understanding it.
-- MarkusQ
Re:a modest proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
Net cost: One Windows computer, one copy of Office-whatever. And a few hours/days of fiddling around with Word macros.
Everyone in your office can be running whatever you want.
My first question (Score:2)
Have they gotten rid of that "integrated desktop"? That was my single biggest grip about previous versions.
Re:My first question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My first question (Score:5, Informative)
Have they gotten rid of that "integrated desktop"?
Yes. I think that was everyone's single biggest complaint about StarOffice. They have also gotten rid of the "memory hog" problem with 5.2, which was that it loaded all five applications into memory and used up about 64MB of physical RAM whenever you wanted to load it.
Their big new feature is using an open XML format for documents. I also believe they have killed the problem where StarOffice took over all of your email clients, other text editors, etc.
I think this version of StarOffice is honestly the first one that will be a real competitor to MS Office, but I think it will really only be used by small businesses and individuals. Large corporations are already dependent on Outlook/Exchange/macros to do their work, and I don't see any large corporations switching off of those anytime soon (especially since there is no real groupware solution that Sun offers that compares with Exchange.)
While we're on new features... (Score:2, Interesting)
-Rothfuss
Re:My first question (Score:2, Interesting)
Our CIO has demanded a report on why we can't go to Star Office instead of Office XP. The asset management people showed him the figures for MS's new liscensing scam er.. scheme. Therefore he wants to go to something non-MS.
Are any other companies going this way?
yes (Score:2, Informative)
Re:yes (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool! (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing I couldn't see -- and I can't get at the downloads to check -- is to see if their Presentation software, Impress, can play movies in slides now. This is actually a big thing; in the hard sciences, where a lot of people use non-Windows and give presentations, one of the major problems for people who want to switch to Linux is that if you have results you want to show in movie form, you're pretty much stuck with using PowerPoint, or exiting your presentation and starting up xanim or something...
Re:Cool! (Score:2, Interesting)
My recollection is that SO 6.0 does not yet have this ability. The first Linux suite that offers this is the one that I will switch to. MS Office compatibility is low on my list -- everyone I interact with uses some flavor of Unix or Linux.
Re:Cool! (Score:2, Interesting)
This also means I can run movies and such inline, as it's just to put those into the slides/webpages as usual.
A friend avoids clicking links by going through the slides beforehand, backing up, then using the 'forward' hotkey to switch, but I feel more comfortable clicking.
/Janne
Staroffice (Score:4, Insightful)
To switch to staroffice, you have to instruct your staff to learn to use it, and adapt the workflow to staroffice, not the other way around. The same goes for switching to any product.
The financial benefits of using staroffice in many cases outweigh the use of OFficeXP
Unix Screenshots? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unix Screenshots? (Score:2)
Re:Unix Screenshots? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unix Screenshots? (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>>>>>
That's really brain-dead. People tend to use one platform consistantly, and like it when a particular app looks like the other apps on their system. Eg. no-one cares if a program looks the same on Linux and Windows, as long as all the Linux apps look the same and all the Windows apps look the same.
Re:Unix Screenshots? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>>>>>>>
Intellectual types are so into paradigms its funny. Here are some facts from reality:
1) Developers are lazy. If not forced to standardize UIs, they'll simply make crappy UIs that look different. At least by standardizing the look, you get crappy UIs that look the same.
2) Developers are lazy. If they have some UI guidelines in front of them, then they might be coaxed into using them, and maybe have the hope of making a good UI. If they have no guidelines, they'll not bother to come up with their own, they'll just make a crappy UI. If you don't believe me, take a look at Mac-Land. Most Mac apps look and behave similarly, but the Mac is the home of such great UIs as Adobe's.
3) Developers are lazy. If they are given the freedom to do whatever they want with the UI, they'll go through the path of least resistance, or of personal preferences.
No, I do not mean to *all* characterize developers as lazy (just most). Some of them do work quite hard to come up with good user interfaces and applications by these developers stand out, even when those apps look exactly like all the other apps on the desktop. The fundemental error that most of the "developer UI freedom" people make is that the *look* of the UI has very little to do with its efficiency/ease of use. There are many UIs on Windows (3D Studio MAX, for example, or Maya) that look like standard Windows apps, but have incredible workflow. Take StarOffice or Mozilla, for an opposing example. There is nothing special in their UIs that makes them more functional than Word or IE. They simply *look* different.
Huge Improvement (Score:3, Interesting)
Mirror up (Score:4, Informative)
Star office 6.0 beta, linux x86, english [pioneeris.net]
Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)
As soon as I can get something that would replace this one last piece, then I can switch away from Windows in my company (as I have at home). Unfortunately, the company relies very much on Outlook's functionality, and will not move away from Exchange server, so if I want to move it's up to me to find and install a compatible alternative, but so compatible that the REST of the users can stay on Outlook if they choose to.
In my opinion, this is one thing that any true Office suite needs before MS-Office can be truly replaced. As buggy and insecure as Outlook is, it organizes the company that I work for, and it can not be removed from my desktop until a fully compatible replacement is available. It's the one last thing that ties me to Windows.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe there is something... (Score:2)
You want Evolution (Score:2, Informative)
That product was designed to do everything that Outlook
can do, from what I understand.
here's an idea (Score:2, Funny)
Also, best of all, they are very resistant to virii. Really, the only virii than can infect them are co-workers who can't keep thier hands off things, who should really be fired anyway.
They are also very easy to find. In fact, just about any shopping center of mall will carry them.
Good luck!
Re:here's an idea (Score:2)
Uhh... no. I'm assuming you haven't used Outlook's calendar, but here's what it gives me. Think large corporate environment:
-I can see anyone else's calendar without leaving my desk. Where's my boss - OH - he's in a meeting which is in meeting room 2. Ok.
-I can book a meeting, and at a glance see when everyone is free (on a chart) and choose my meeting time by that. No millions of phone calls to arrange a mutually-convenient time
-I can book a meeting room, reserve a projector and send a notice to all attendees in one step, without picking up the phone
This is why it's important that it's compatible. Everyone needs to be able to access everyone else's calendar for this to work. Outlook, despite its faults, does this very nicely.
Re:here's an idea (Score:2)
No it doesn't. Outlook is compatible only with outlook. You can do all you want plus more with a free thing called WebCalendar. It works with every friggin web browser, not just a handful of braindead windows boxes.
If a company has made themself dependent on the MS platform for the sake of email and Calendar, I most seriously doubt their judgement and competence.
Re:here's an idea (Score:2)
If a company has made themself dependent on the MS platform for the sake of email and Calendar, I most seriously doubt their judgement and competence.
Corporate workstations all running 'doze (especially the ones on the desks of the guys with the budgets to spend), lots of NT servers in the data center, no its not surprising that they should choose to standardize on outlook for corporate email. Once thats in place its also an apparent no-brainer to get everybody using the integrated calendar management. Then, once this hypothetical company has done all this, they start getting bitten firmly on the ass by the disadvantages of this solution and the IT dept can do nothing but shrug and say "we warned you, but you didnt listen...." Unfortunately having said that they still have to look for solutions that will work in the environment that exists at the time. Unless it was done comparatively recently there wasnt any real alternative to 'doze for the generic user - unix variants and other alternate OSs have come a long way in that regard real fast.
Once you've been "embraced and extended" its real hard to break loose unless you've got something thats 100% compatible to ease the migration process.
Yes, it's called Ximian Evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
So far, Evolution's main shortcoming is it doesn't understand Exchange protocols, so Linux clients can't use it to talk to Exchange for shared calendaring. I realize that is one of the main points you need. I believe it is a fatal flaw for evolution, but Ximian apparently doesn't think it's such a big deal, saying that such support will come "eventually, but not high priority". Nonetheless, it can do IMAP, POP, LDAP, and a bunch of other open protocols.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
At the other end of the problem, the free software community is in dire need of a Samba-like clone of Exchange's MAPI abilities.
Right now, Linux still makes a better server than it does a desktop. I've replaced NT file/print servers with Samba+Linux; I've used PostgreSQL+Linux instead of MS SQL Server; but there is no way to replace an NT Exchange server with anything and still take advantage of Outlook's sweet MAPI groupware functionality.
I just don't understand why there isn't a free software Exchange clone out there. I'll tell you what - Exchange aint cheap; if a stable replacement existed for *nix, it would be one less reason for anyone to run NT Server.
Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to do it.
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Because it's a dumb idea to begin with, and there are better ways to accomplish the same thing?
How's the Word format support? (Score:2)
Thank you in advance for a reply.
Real interoperability with Office? Schweet. (Score:2)
Now, not only does it contain the basic file filters, but it sensibly starts utilizing things like the default Outlook address book. Will all of this stuff work? It's questionable. But one of my best arguments for the Mac was "and this program can read Word files". Now, hopefully, I can say the same thing for Linux.
Re:Real interoperability with Office? Schweet. (Score:2)
Limerick (Score:2, Funny)
His competitors, how he did hate
A new Office contender
Useless it was rendered
"Change Word formats, make it obsolete!"
Mirrors and Such (Score:2)
Openoffice vs Staroffice (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Openoffice vs Staroffice (Score:3, Informative)
The source code available at OpenOffice.org does not consist of all of the StarOffice code. Usually, the reason for this is that Sun pays to license third party code to include in StarOffice that which it does not have permission to make available in OpenOffice.org. Those things which are or will be present in StarOffice but are not available on OpenOffice.org include:
Looks like Sun is giving away everything that doesn't cost them money to give away.
$479 for Office XP!?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
each year they add a few clicks here, move the menus around, change the file format a bit so no one could parse it properly and then they would sell it for sky high. well if they quality of the software justifies the cost, that's fine. but obviously but unfortunately it's not the case. now that's the cost for one person if he/she wants to buy it. if he makes (let's say) $30 an hour. it would take him 16 hours = 2 days of salary just to be wasted on this.... minus tax, minus food/shelter/money to be spent on car/insurances... that's about 3-4 days of salary just to get something like that...oh man....!
now imagine the whole company wanting to upgrade for whatever reason (yes.. it's true... just look around the labs in your college/university campus. they ALL want to spend so much money for the upgrade for whatever reason...)...
BUT afterall, i never bought a copy of office. my windows is a pirated version. so it's still free for me.... unfortunately it takes at least one person to buy it before i can burn myself a CD copy...
hope the new version of staroffice is not as bloat and can actually keep consistant formats so i can write my engeering docs and paper on it day in and day out!
Another blurb (Score:2)
The Register has also noted StarOffice new version here [theregister.co.uk].
They also go on to say that they find Abiword the best of the free Office suite pack.
As a Star Office 5.2 user... (Score:2)
So now to get access to their old data, I have to re-fetch *something*, either 5.2 or the 6.0 beta. Most people will not be in this precise situation, but I'm sure many will want to know about the interoperability and quality of the beta.
So before I get started on either/any big download, should I just skip 5.2 and go for 6.0?
Microsoft will not allow perfect importing (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, if I give someone a M$ Word document created on the Macintosh, the opening of that document will sometimes crash a windows machine. There is no reason for this as I am simply transferring a document from MS Word to MS Word. I suppose that such problems are tolerated because it limit the appeal of MacOS machines, and may indicate that I need to upgrade to the latest Office.
So, naive folks, do not wait for the day when MS Office documents will seamlessly integrate with Star Office. And do not blame Star Office for the problems. History provides nearly 20 years of evidence, all the way back to incomplete specifications for system calls in DOS, that M$ will do whatever it can to insure that integration does not occur.
MSOffice & XML (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/developer/platfor
Because of the many benefits associated with the use of XML, customers have demanded easy, robust support for XML, and Microsoft has answered them. Currently, Microsoft is concentrating on Microsoft Access and Excel--the applications in which XML can have the biggest impact.
Access and EXCEL? They just want to keep Word as proprietary as possible. Word is the one people can't get in or out of. Of course they don't want to focus on XML for Word. Jeash
WOW (Score:2)
Basicly its a pkzip encoded directory tree with a pictures folder, XML metadata and content, really looks nice !
almost there... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to see some reasonable competition for MS Office. I alternate between Office2K and Openoffice (633) with reasonable success, but there are a few things left to complete the puzzle:
1. Where's the Mac OSX version? OS10.1 is getting great reviews, but this is even more critical from a general marketing standpoint than from a Mac-head view. Why? Cross-platform compatibility is a great marketing lever, not because of a possible massive platform shift (unlikely) but because of uncertainty about platforms and compatiblity over the long term. (See #4 below.)
2. Some major features are not quite there: imho outlining is the biggest hole; people who write large documents or like structure really need it. Instead of just copying the MS interface, perhaps the existing SO/Navigator tool could be extended to provide a killer structure interface similar to Framemaker+SGML. That would be pretty compelling. Likewise, a quickstart feature (as just implemented in Mozilla) would help to silence the yelps about quick startup ( after long preload) of MS Office XP.
3. Sun/OpenOffice needs migration documentation & tools. For example, it would be nice to have a short whitepaper from Sun that describes (or better yet, provides a one-click tool) that reconfigures MS Office to save in known cross-compatible formats. Word files should be saved in RTF or a reasonably-documented
4. Marketing!! Star/OpenOffice has such potential, and if handled properly, can deliver a very compelling message. I'm no marketing guru, but imagine turning some heads with these advert leaders:
Jon (insertmyslashdotname@jetcity.com)
Re:almost there... (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that WordPerfect and Lotus have 100x the name recognition of StarOffice and competitive products and they've failed to compete on price. It's good to see Sun not fall into the same trap and not embarrass themselves by pushing SO before it's ready.
Also, at this point there is no plan for a Mac port. That gives MSO "99.xxx%" market coverage and StarOffice only 95% or so.
How long before free CD's appear (Score:5, Funny)
* Day 1 - You must register to download product, but server overloaded due to demand and
* Day 2 - You must still register to download product, but server takes ages to allow you to download. Give up.
* Day 3 - You've forgotten your password, re-register, to find that server's been misconfigured by some Sun intern SA who doesn't know his apache rewrites from his linux rawrite.
* Day 4 - You get registered, get the software, and find the file got corrupted in the download.
* Day 5 - Internet connection down, so nothing to do but work.
* Day 6 - Internet connection up, remembered password, downloaded product, ran of out of disk space.
* Day 7 - Having mentioned the product was out to your colleagues, a week ago now (without having seen it), you are ridiculed when they realise
you're still using MS-Office on the sly.
* Day 8 - Hurrah! Downloaded, installed and running. Success. Treat yourself to visit a conference that's on in town. Some bloke hands you a "special edition CD", featuring beta of staroffice 6. Go home to weep.
*WHY* is there this damn registration. *WHY* aren't there loads of mirrors (sunsite!!!!). You know they'll be dishing out the damn CD's eventually.
And they say the network is the computer....
and after all that, my downloads working, on day one.
strange things are afoot at the circle-k.
(no, i don't work weekends these days)
Multiuser installation? (Score:2)
Re:Multiuser installation? (Score:4, Insightful)
And it is pointed out several times in the detailed installation guide.
Sometimes I think the difference between computer gurus and guys like Lehtyos and other normal computer users is the ability and willingness to read a manual....
Gobe Productive (Score:2, Interesting)
Productive 1.0 started as a product of the team who created ClarisWorks (now AppleWorks), but for BeOS. With it's wonderful interface, and the backing of the great but now dwindling BeOS community, Gobe stayed alive and released a 2.0 version a year or two before Be began to go under.
Productive is a great product, and I suggest you all look here [gobe.com] to find a great alternative to Microsoft Office and Sun StarOffice. Now for both Windows, Linux and BeOS.
Re:Double Standards (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Double Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The internet is slowly being brought to the masses. Windows 3.1 exists, but need the WinSock TCP/IP stack to get in the net - fortunately, a free version is available, and is included by ISPs. Mosaic is also included...
2. Netscape builds and releases a much improved "Mosaic", called Navigator. Microsoft yawns, sees it all as a "fad", that the consumer won't embrace.
3. 1995 rolls around, and the consumer is raving mad for the net - Bill looks around and screams WTF!? Netscape is raking in money from sales of Navigator, creates Communicator which adds email, news, and web site creation tools.
4. In a mad dash, Bill throws out Windows 95, which had been worked on for a while, but had no internet capability (AFAIK). Rushes to make a TCP/IP stack (probably bought WinSock, knowing him).
5. Bill then sees that the internet explosion isn't a fad, and that he must "posess" it - rapidly IE is created, and is released for free to the masses.
At this point, things go crazy - because while Netscape isn't free - it is, sorta - but people for some reason are too stupid (or honest?) to figure it out: Netscape is "free" for students - simply check the student box on the download form, and you can download it for free - no authentication or anything required. Still, most people see it as expensive, and the marketing/FUD is done for IE to point out how expensive Netscape was (which it really wasn't that expensive - $70.00 or so for the deluxe version).
6. MS then "bundles" IE with later copies of 95, then fully integrates it into 98 - thus sealing the fate of Netscape, which went on to become a footnote (yes, I know it still exists, etc - but in the whole scheme of things, Netscape is just the tool, and not the company it was any longer).
It is this major undercutting that is a bad business practice - they saw that such software was cheap and easy to make, and thus had no "real" value, unlike an office package. But that doing so would leverage them into a whole new market, a much larger possible market - to market that office software to.
Now, Sun is doing the same thing - who knows if it is for revenge over Java or what - or if _they_ have some ulterior motive (which they probably do), which would allow them to leverage into another market...
Re:Double Standards (Score:2, Insightful)
Competitor (Score:3, Insightful)
We shall see if corporations are ready to give up some functionality (admittedly, MS Office is still the one to beat there) to save on costs.
With MS raising the price, it might come to pass.
Re:mirrors (Score:2, Informative)
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/openoffice/Star
or
ftp://borft.student.utwente.nl/StarOffice60
Mike
You must mean LaTeX. (Score:3, Insightful)
When I started using Linux, I first used LyX for a couple of projects. Fortunately I tried out 'pure' LaTeX (itself a set of macros for TeX) and found it so much better.
There are several GUI frontends to LaTeX, one being LyX, and you can only harness so much power of the actual system via those interfaces. It's like coding C++ via a point n' click interface. You will only realize the point of LaTeX when using it natively.