Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3333 in Software
• Brand: Sun Microsystems
• Model: 0614647643195
• Released on: 2003-10-24
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows 95, Sun Solaris, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Linux, Windows 98
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1

Manufacturer's Description
StarOffice 7 Office Suite is the world's leading office productivity suite on Linux and the Solaris OS, and the leading alternative office suite on Windows.StarOffice software is affordable, easy to use, and based on open standards. It offers word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database capabilities. Its familiar interface enables quick productivity and results for the business user, and elegant output for the consumer.StarOffice 7 software adds functionality to enable export to PDF, and to the Macromedia Flash format. It also introduces the new StarOffice Configuration Manager, the StarOffice Software Development Kit, a macro recorder, and support for assistive technologies, as well as for complex text layouts.

Customer Reviews

Beats Microsoft Office in quality and price
I've used StarOffice 5.2 and 6.0 but this is the first Office suite that outperforms Microsoft Office.

The word processor is the most impressive. I tested it on a set of documents I'd created with Microsoft Office that I knew were problematic. They could only be saved in rtf format, contained 450 embedded objects and were split into multiple documents because Word could handle them properly. StarWriter could open all 8 simultaneously, string them together and save in its own format. I haven't found a Word document yet that it can't deal with.

There aren't many new features but there are a lot of improvements in performance, stability and look. One nice new feature is the PDF writer that lets you create Adobe Acrobat documents. There's also a feature to create shockwave flash, but I haven't tested it.

Two features I like are the drawings and the maths formula handling. You can create very high quality drawings and diagrams and embed them in other documents or export them as web-friendly pictures, for example, for emailing. Maths formulas are handled with a maths editor that is faster and much more stable than Microsoft equation editor. This isn't a feature for everyone, but , for example, will make the software better for schools' use—Sun give free licences to educational establishments.

Impress creates presentations. I found it better than PowerPoint. It can save in PowerPoint format reliably though you may lose some of the extra features (like better slide transitions).

Calc, the spreadsheet does almost everything you can do in Microsoft Excel, though they haven't cloned all the third party addins (regression analysis, etc.). For most people that won't make a difference.

I haven't yet tried Adabas, the database.

Overall, this is a brilliant piece of software. Often it's little improvements—the ability to write macros, the easy spell correction, the easy and flexible style organisation, the page and paragraph handling—that make the difference.

StarOffice is less than half the price of Microsoft Office Standard and has similar features to Microsoft Office Professional. It is based on a free office suite called OpenOffice, available from www.openoffice.org. StarOffice adds a few extra features: better spellchecker, fonts and user interface.

Very surprised at how good StarOffice is
Until a few weeks ago I would never have advised people to buy anything other than Microsoft Office for their office suite. I have played around with other suites over the years but none proved to be as user-friendly and productive as Microsoft Office.

However, having tried StarOffice 7.0, my view has completely changed. This version of StarOffice is superb. It is easy to use, powerful and stable. I have loaded numerous Microsoft Word files with no problems (I have heard compatibility with other file types is also good, with slight problems only occurring when you start to use the more advanced features).

There are a few rough edges. For example, the word processor takes quite a bit longer to load a file than Microsoft Word (but once loaded everything is nippy). The buttons and icons in the user interface are not as "pretty" as in Microsoft Office, and some of the features take a bit of getting used to (but are certainly not difficult to use).

Overall, I think StarOffice is an excellent product and remarkably good value. If you are a power user of Microsoft Office you may miss some of the more advanced features and run into slight problems with file compatibility, but for the typical user StarOffice has everything that you need and offers good compatibility with Microsoft Office.

For the first time in a long while there is now a viable competitor to Microsoft Office.

Note: StarOffice is based on the open source project openoffice.org. If you don't need the improved database functionality and extras that come with StarOffice and can make do without dedicated customer support (instead relying on internet forums and mailing lists), then you can download a free copy of openoffice.org from www.openoffice.org instead.

sooo great!!
I really love this software. I had office XP which i've uninstalled and much prefer to use staroffice 7. The things i love about it are the following;

1. autocomplete|autocorrect : it'll remember 10,000 words of your most often used vocabulary and it'll autocomplete|autocorrect them. Typing becomes so much easier, it's really so cool.
2. The Navigator|Stylist : they may be a little unusual for some, but once you get used to them you appreciate the power and beauty of them, and how they make viewing and changing structure and format of your documents so easy and quick.
3. Anyone who tried to do bullets or numbered lists in MS Word will have experienced the frustration of it messing up the entire list and ending up unable to correct that; happens almost every time i did a list in MS Word of any significant length. Not for Staroffice, bulletted or numbered lists here are so reliable, i have never experienced a problem with them.
4. Staroffice 7 loads so much faster than starOffice 6, it loads in only a third of the time; now consider how i preferred staroffice 6 over MS Office XP because it loaded faster! Staroffice 7 loads faster than anything MS Office. It also opens documents of significant size much faster, much much faster. I have had occasions when Office XP messed up a document and it no longer opened that I just had to use Staroffice, which opened it with ease.
5. Stability is remarkable. It's very stable, and it shows when you open large documents.

6. Staroffice format is XML and the files are so much smaller than those of MS Office XP, perhaps only a third the size or even less. A 45Kb word document would be around 13Kb when saved in staroffice xml format.
7. template and autotext, macros are things that make repetitive tasks so easy. Staroffice can also be programmed in Basic and also in Python.
8. Staroffice is developed the open source way through openoffice.org. Although you can get openoffice.org for free, staroffice is a much more polished version, it comes with support, and it also has additional components that aren't provided in the openoffice.org version. If you are an educational user, you can get Staroffice 7 for free, just go to www.sun.com/edu/ . If you're not an educational user, then Buy this software pack, it's really a great deal at this price.