Star Office vs Microsoft Office
Has anyone had any first hand experience in using Star Office? I ask because the school district I work for is using Office 2000 and we approached the "Directory of Technology" with the the fact that when office 12 is released we will be 4 generations behind and should seriously think about upgrading. His reply was that we should consider Sun's Star Office as an alternative. Seeing as I have never used Star Office I am looking for input. I know I have experienced issues with Using Word Perfect and Office, but thats about it. The two main issues that concern me are:
Compatibility: We have many huge files from excel, word, and access that are merged with other documents and I am afraid some of that will be lost in the translation. Also how truley compatible is Star Office if a student or teacher creates a document such as a power point presentation at home and tries to import it in for editing in Star Office? Stuff like that.
Functionality: In my experience the teachers I work with are very threatened by change and I think a Jump to a different office platform would open a pandora's box and create an uproar with the teacher's union and parents.
Currently we are experience issues of Students creating documents in the latest version powerpoint and being unable to edit because of the new features they use at home. Also I have run into many instances of people using the new works suite and word 2000 being unable to open the document. In an attempt to battle this I had the viewers for Word 2003, Excel 2003, and Powerpoint 2003 installed on virtually every computer, but that still only allows them to see the document and they cannot edit without losing some features. My boss (the director of technology) is concerned about cost and while that is a factor, there are many other things to consider than just the bottom dollar. I have a friend that his company used Star Office last year and it caused major headaches with old spreadsheet and database files they had and made those files pretty much useless. They ended up dumping Star Office and upgrading to Office 2003. But that is only one story, I am interested in hearing more.