StarOffice

[kduhaime]

For those people that do not yet have an office suite for their computer complete with word processor, spreadsheet program, database program, etc., I suggest you might want to check out StarOffice from Sun Microsystems. It is available for Windows 95/98/NT and also almost all flavours of Unix and Linux as well. It is free and almost identical to Microsoft Office. It can import most types of Microsoft documents as well including Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. We have been using the Unix version for a couple of weeks now and have found it way more solid and reliable than Microsoft Office.

[jlamb]

Thanks for the information. Why is Sun giving a package that is complex enough to rival MS Office away for free? Is it a trial version or beta version?

[kduhaime]

The package is the actual product, not a beta or trial product. It is quite complete; word processor, presentation package, spreadsheet program, database program, etc.). The download is about 66 MB or you can order it on CD-ROM from Sun for about $20-25. They can afford to give it away because unlike Microsoft, Sun's business model is built around its server hardware and services. StarOffice is originally from Germany and the company was recently bought by Sun Microsystems. It has several features over its Microsoft equivalent. First of all, it is a far more stable product we have found so the user can get on with their work rather than mucking around because of a crash. Secondly, it respects open standards for data storage set by ANSI, the ISO, and similar organizations reducing platform risk and ensuring that 3, 5 or 10 years down the road the user can still get access to the data, documents, or info they store on their computer today. This is quite an improvement over the Microsoft Office equivalents which use proprietary formats that are not published. I have had problems in the past with proprietary data formats in older cow-calf and pig production record keeping systems. There should be a process put in place to warn farmers who are buying software to be aware of proprietary file formats like Microsoft Access which can cause problems in the future when they wish to migrate to another package. The use of these should be considered highly unethical. To add to this, Sun is making the source code for the software publicly available, ensuring that in the future developers can easily reference how the software creates files if need be. Third, it allows the user to choose the platform on which they wish to run it whereas you have to use Microsoft Windows and associated technology headaches (crashes, viruses, etc.) for Microsoft Office (Granted, you still may have to contend with some of these if you are using the Windows version, but at least the user now has a migration path to get away from Windows). Currently there is not a version for Macintosh, but the next generation of the Mac OS is in fact a Unix operating system based on BSD like Sun's Solaris and most other Unixes and hence should run the Unix version fine. I have referenced Sun's website for interested parties.