A star from Sun (Sun StarOffice 5.2)

Member Name: mo79

Product:	Sun StarOffice 5.2
Date:	20/08/00 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fully-featured office suite, free, MS Office compatible, available for multiple platforms, good for home and small business users

Disadvantages: Slow, big, need to pay for a CD, needs a web browser, no Mac version, not recommended for really mission critical environments

First of all, I know this category is for StarOffice 5.2, but I don't think unlike a future StarOffice 6 there is too much difference between the current two, for me to not post an opinion here.
Anyway, Sun's StarOffice is really excellent! It's basically an office software suite (word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations etc.) that's available for a number of computer platforms, it's really good, and guess what? It's FREE!
If I remember correctly, StarOffice was part of Starfish Software. I don't know what happened to them as a company, but Sun Microsystem's (a highly acclaimed company) acquisition of StarOffice was a killer, and then porting it to a number of platforms, and making it free.
The only gripe I have is that the software's a bit slow to load and run sometimes even though it's very attractive looking, as a lot of the software relies on HTML, and which is why it needs a web browser installed, but apart from that you get more than your no-money's worth!
It's undoubtedly not a serious contender to Microsoft Office, but when you see the fact that is full-featured powerful software and for free, it probably still is their only real contender. Perfect software for cheapskates or poor office users, and still a very viable alternative as it's not at all rubbish!
I got my copy for free on CD by following a website link from a magazine ad, but now you can either download it (it's quite large over 100mb), or order a packaged CD for $9.95 delivery, which is still peanuts!
The software is also fully MS Office compatible, so don't worry about saving in weird file formats, all the popular ones are here!
I use StarOffice a lot at home as I find it really really good, and I still can't believe it's free! It's just a shame that there's no Mac version yet as that would've been a real killing, but Windows, SunOS, BeOS, and Linux users should definetly chec
k it out. You've got nothing to lose, it is brilliant! Having said that I'd say it's better for home users and small businesses rather than big companies with fast mission critical needs, so this is a good alternative to MS Works like packages. Microsoft beware! This deserves a perfect rating for being free and excellent with only minor niggles, if you can bare with that. Highly recommended!

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