Star Office vs Microsoft Office

**BOB IROC** · January 9th, 2006, 01:08 PM

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.

**TripleRLtd** · January 9th, 2006, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by BOB IROC

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.

That is supposed to be the problem with Star Office: compatablilty, especially with spreadsheets.
I'm sure you'll get many comments, but how about you "borrow" his copy, or buy just one copy and see for yourself how it works in your environment...that's what I would do. Personally, I don't do "corporate" so I don't have that xp, and the last Star I used was the one before they started charging.

**3fingersalute** · January 9th, 2006, 01:54 PM

have a look at OpenOffice as well, its come a long way.

**TechZ** · January 9th, 2006, 01:55 PM

What about http://www.openoffice.org/ ?

**3fingersalute** · January 9th, 2006, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by TechZ

What about http://www.openoffice.org/ ?

great idea

**TechZ** · January 9th, 2006, 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by 3fingersalute

great idea

hehe same time posts, it always happens when you least expect it

**BOB IROC** · January 9th, 2006, 03:22 PM

correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Star Office 8 the commercial release of OpenOffice 2.0? I think my boss is either going to buy a copy or get an evaluation copy of StarOffice. I would like to test it with our complex spreadsheets and our merged documents which are used frequently here in our district. I read this article http://searchwin2000.techtarget.com/...129233,00.html and it is stuff like the last line that scares me.

"If an organization does not use templates with complex macros [and] if they are just using standard templates and spreadsheets, they will find little difficulty using StarOffice,"

We do stuff like that mentioned in the above quote, not to mention we have stuff that is integrated with asp.net and many of our programs that are written to integrate with access databases that include but are not limited to personel and student records. I guess I think the money saved in purchasing StarOffice as an alternative would be spent in re-writing programs.