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Software Google Distributes Sun's StarOffice for Free
Brandon Hill (Blog) - August 16, 2007 2:21 PM

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34 comment(s) - last by mindless1.. on Aug 18 at 12:36 AM

StarOffice drops the $70 fee to join Google Pack

Google Pack bucks Google's traditional trend of offering online-based applications and services. The Internet giant is bulking up its Google Pack software suite today with the addition of Sun's StarOffice.

StarOffice is closely related with the freely available OpenOffice productivity suite. StarOffice, on the other hand, has carried a price tag of $70. Google will offer StarOffice for free in its Google Pack; however, it will not come with technical support from Sun.

"It's a paradigm shift," said Sun's executive VP of software Rich Green. "It brings together office productivity, networking and search into one offering."

"Users will benefit from access to a free, full-featured office suite for the desktop," Google said in a statement. "And we've also always believed that users should have choice in their online and PC experience."

Star Office joins other Google Pack applications which include Google Toolbar for IE, Spyware Doctor, Picasa, Google Talk, Norton Security Scan, Google Desktop, Google Photos Screensaver and Skype.

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Correction

By TomZ on 8/16/2007 2:34:55 PM , Rating: 4

quote:
"It's a paradigm shift," said Sun's executive VP of software Rich Green. "It brings together office productivity, networking and search into one offering."

Hey, Rich, I corrected that for you: It's a paradigm shift - we are giving away the software for free now since we realized nobody would pay for it anyway.

RE: Correction

By UNCjigga on 8/16/2007 2:38:05 PM , Rating: 1

LULZ

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RE: Correction

By therealnickdanger on 8/16/2007 2:43:54 PM , Rating: 2

Funny and true enough. I can appreciate the desire for competitive products, but I honestly can't imagine my existence without Microsoft Office. I own it at home and at work. Everyone we work with uses it and knows it, just like Windows. I'm actually happy that it is the standard, I look forward to using it. Sure, it could stand to go on a diet, but I have never felt compelled to change to anything else - not even for free.

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RE: Correction

By UNCjigga on 8/16/2007 3:16:32 PM , Rating: 2

Very true. I love MS Office, and they seem to improve it with every new edition (I haven't used Office 2007 yet). The only thing I'd ever consider switching to is Office .mac--and then I wouldn't miss Outlook. MS Exchange and Outlook just suck.

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RE: Correction

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 3:38:27 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I wouldn't miss Outlook

outlook 07 is pretty cool actually, i was with you before though, outlook 2003 was no fun.

As for Office 07 in general, its greatly improved over previous versions. Word especially is just great once you get the hang of it. All programs are formatted into tabs making finding things a lot easier and except for outlook they have done away with the traditional, file,edit,format, etc.. dropdown menus.

Not that you would know from just looking at it but one of the coolest things i have seen so far is every format whether it be, xls,doc,ppt are all saved in specially formatted xml files.

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RE: Correction

By therealnickdanger on 8/16/2007 4:04:06 PM , Rating: 2

OMG, 2007 is such a dramatic improvement! I love how easy it is to FINALLY drag and drop between all the seperate Office apps. It was a long time coming. We use Novell Groupwise at work (ugh) instead of Outlook. It's the last bastion of non-Microsoft products we are forced to use. I'll be glad when it is gone.

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RE: Correction

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 4:13:11 PM , Rating: 2

I remember groupwise, it was only good because of the webclient, that allowed you to access your email from anywhere.

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RE: Correction

By TomZ on 8/16/2007 4:21:17 PM , Rating: 1

That feature has been supported in Exchange as far back as I can remember.

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RE: Correction

By GreenyMP on 8/17/2007 11:44:40 AM , Rating: 1

Do you guys really love MS Office? I use it -- but I don't love it. I guess for the most part I just type in the white area and then save and email. I don't have any idea what most of the buttons do, and I don't really care. And I think that most users are like me.

If StarOffice is free and can save a .doc that is compatible with everyone else in the world, then I would install that before I would pay $250 for Office again. (I would buy a Nintendo Wii instead) But for me even installing StarOffice is more of a hassle than it is worth. I think I will just use Google docs and spreadsheets. They save to compatible formats, they are free, no installation is required, and they are available on every computer on the internet.

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RE: Correction

By quickk on 8/16/2007 4:12:04 PM , Rating: 3

I honestly can't imagine writing anything longer than a couple page report with MS word. LaTeX is so much better!

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RE: Correction

By gramboh on 8/16/2007 6:26:56 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah if you can/want to waste hours typing in format code. Latex is great for making documents look nice that have to. For time sensitive business type reports, Word is fine.

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RE: Correction

By Spivonious on 8/16/2007 2:48:04 PM , Rating: 3

Let's see, $70 for StarOffice which is big and slow and is really only good for the home user, or $150 for MS Office 2007 which is compatible with what I use at work and has a cool new interface?

That's too easy of a question, so Sun decided to drop the fee and jump on the Google bandwagon.

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RE: Correction

By Googer on 8/17/2007 6:17:06 AM , Rating: 2

Or $99 for Corel Word Perfect Office which ahead of MS Office by light years (I mean 5 years).

http://www.wpvsword.com/

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RE: Correction

By mindless1 on 8/18/2007 12:34:27 AM , Rating: 1

Actually the better question is why are you paying again for an office suite at all? Use what you had been, either it worked or you wouldn't have been using it.

To say StarOffice is "big" as if MS Office 2007 isn't is just laughable though, but I suppose you don't even realize office 95 could be installed from floppies and does over 90% of what the world needs. Maybe that remaining 10% is progressively whittled away with each newer version of office but it is never really like one is forced to abandon what they have until they have a specific reason to do so, nobody should be thinking let's compare X, Y, and Z, rather they should be thinking they're upgrading for specific reasons and 1 product covers those best.

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OpenOffice owns!

By Barkuti on 8/16/2007 10:05:16 PM , Rating: 1

OK let's see:

M$ Office: prob. most powerful and featured, most "compatible" (because of people's lazyness; actually maybe the least one); big, fat, bloated, fat/space inefficient propietary format, ... did I said bloated? Mmm, I almost forgot, hurts your wallet (or maybe not ;) )

OpenOffice: super lightweight, wide format support, LGPL license, and probably powerful enough for most people. Also for Linux. OtoH, format conversion may have issues (not many for me), not as featured as the top dog, just a few fonts in the package (tons of them free to download anyway); but... it's cheap. Hey! Mmm, no, IT'S FREE!
Since it does what I need, it's my suite of choice.

StarOffice: Used it a bit when it was free; the foundation for OpenOffice. So if not cheap, and not much better than OpenOffice, ...

Change your mind: free software, free knowledge, free yourself, free everything.

Cheers

RE: OpenOffice owns!

By Ringold on 8/16/2007 11:39:38 PM , Rating: 2

Allow me to translate:

Microsoft Office 07: Almost universal compatibility, leader in functionality and interface, not free, and not for computers over 5-7 years old.

Open Office: Slightly lighter weight, less feautures, less compatible, and POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!11

To be honest, I work hard enough and make enough money that I'd buy even my grandmother Office 2007 to use rather than inflict OpenOffice upon her; these days $150 isn't really all that much. I know it is for high school kids, that's probably a days work flippin' burgers, but for working "big kids" not so much when the value it provides is considered. I can't quantify it but my productivity under 07 is markedly improved, partly thanks to the 'Strip' placing most things I need at my finger tips, a couple improved features and a UI that manages to slow down fatigue.

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RE: OpenOffice owns!

By larson0699 on 8/17/2007 1:59:15 AM , Rating: 2

Eff that.

High school kids wouldn't flip burgers just to buy Office. They're part of the BitTorrent know!

MSO'07 is great but nonetheless a resource-hungry MS product. FONTS SLOW SYSTEMS, no rocket science here.

I'm sure Joe Average can click on an icon conveniently renamed "Word" and write, print, and email as he would with MSO. Many features lacking kinda translates into less unnecessary RAM bloat; most of us aren't doing envelopes and mail merge.

People didn't familiarize with Office overnight, either... There's simply new players now.

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RE: OpenOffice owns!

By Ringold on 8/17/2007 9:17:34 PM , Rating: 2

07 would be, I have to say, much easier to learn from scratch than either OO or 03 would be.

As for RAM bloat..

MSO 2007 after launching: 16,568k
OO Writer after launching: 15,292k
Oh Noes! The vastly superior, polished UI and mature feature set eats a whopping 1,276k of RAM!

Sorry if my 4GB PC, 2GB PC and 1GB RAM laptop fails to even note the difference. ;)

I didn't say high school n00bs would flip burgers for Office, I just said it'd be a solid day of burger flippin'. I got Office 03 through not entirely legit means once upon a time when I too was young and poor, so.. I can't say much. All legal now, though.

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RE: OpenOffice owns!

By mindless1 on 8/18/2007 12:36:22 AM , Rating: 2

Maybe you're overlooking that a default install of MS Office precaches a lot? Using clean systems you'd have to compare the total memory footprint of either, systems that had not the other installed at all yet.

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RE: OpenOffice owns!

By Alexstarfire on 8/17/2007 12:24:44 PM , Rating: 2

I'm actually 100% positive that Notepad, possibly Wordpad, is more than enough for 75% of the people who own computers.

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I'm getting confused

By BigLan on 8/16/2007 3:44:51 PM , Rating: 3

Didn't star office start out as a commercial package that sun bought, renamed star office v1 and give out for free?

Then they brought out v2 which was 'for pay' but spun off openoffice which was the free version, and now they're deciding to give away star office again?

Whatever this history of this, I'll stick with MS office thanks. I couldn't imagine life without VBA and don't want to learn the openoffice equivalent.

RE: I'm getting confused

By mars777 on 8/16/2007 5:20:09 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

Edsger W. Dijkstra

I think it's true.
I started the other way. First C then VB. That is a quote i have deduced by myself then one day found it on internet.

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RE: I'm getting confused

By mars777 on 8/16/2007 5:25:59 PM , Rating: 2

If you wonder who is Mr. Dijkstra then you should just know that OSes wouldnt exist if if wasn for him.

He invented the "semaphore" construct which is a construct used by any kernel in any OS today, along with many unique algorithms.

Just try to google before you say: "Who is him to say that?" :)

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Memories...

By phaxmohdem on 8/16/2007 6:48:56 PM , Rating: 2

The first time I used Star Office was back in the fall of 2000. I had it on my very first laptop (AST Ascentia 910n (486-dX4 75MHz/16MB RAM/810?MB HDD)

I'm not sure what version it was, but it was the slowest damned program ever (especially on that machine). Office 97 ran OK, under Win95, (As well as GTA 2 ;) ) But StarOffice took no joke 2-3 minutes to start up, and typing anything was painful as you could easily type faster than characters would pop up.

I've recently tried out the Open Office 2 suite, and it is an improvement to be sure, however it still lags a bit in my experience, and is not as polished as the Office 2003 pro suite I already own.. So no thanks.

I do applaud the effort made to provide a free alternative to Office, and it is definitely a worthwhile group of apps. Hopefully the project continues and keeps getting better. I only wish I knew enough about programming and whatnot to contribute to a cause like this.

RE: Memories...

By larson0699 on 8/17/2007 2:04:56 AM , Rating: 2

Disclaimer, offtopic.

What in the hell were you doing with a 486 in 2000??! (I had a Pentium 100MHz, lawlz)

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RE: Memories...

By phaxmohdem on 8/17/2007 3:59:29 PM , Rating: 2

lol I was in high school... = no money.

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OpenOffice <> StarOffice

By Griswold on 8/16/2007 2:49:25 PM , Rating: 2

Isnt StarOffice using the same code base as OpenOffice? Why bother? The Google sticker and search function wont make me shift now...

RE: OpenOffice <> StarOffice

By bdewong on 8/16/2007 2:55:24 PM , Rating: 2

StarOffice has one big plus for use in our office which is a larger default font pack than OpenOffice. I realize it doesn't make that much of a difference to most, but when we changed from Star to Open, we had to go back and revise some presentations.

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I always "try" to use OpenOffice...

By kmmatney on 8/16/2007 3:19:39 PM , Rating: 2

Everytime I try to start using OpenOffice, something frustrates me, and I go back to MS Office 2000 (which I got for free from my company). We use Office 2003 at work, and that is very good. In my opinion, OpenOffice is about the equivalent of Office '97.

The last thing that drove me crazy about OPenOffice was no "TexttoColumns" feature. I know you can do this sprt of thing when importing a file, but I was cut and pasting in my columns. No TextToColums = Uninstall OpenOffice.