StarOffice 8: An Affordable, Small-Business Alternative to Microsoft Office A Word on OpenOffice Michael Hall
File Imports and Exports
A key concern for anyone thinking about moving from Office to any other suite is how well legacy documents will survive the transition. Sun has spent a lot of time on file import functionality, and it shows.
We imported documents of varying complexity into Writer, Calc, and Express. For the most part the documents made the transition easily. In particular, we were pleased to note that comments and revision tracking survived the import process. We also noted that the "round trip" process of importing a Word document, editing it, saving it as a StarOffice document, and then exporting it back to Word caused no noticeable problems.
StarOffice also lets you export files directly to Adobe's PDF (Acrobat) format — another welcome feature. Acrobat files aren't always the most welcome things in the world, if only because you have to open yet another application to read them, but when it comes to ensuring a recipient can read a document or presentation and make copies for signing or marking up, PDFs are hard to beat.
What all of this means for curious small business owners is that investing in StarOffice isn't as much of a risk as you might think — the software can read and write to the dominant Office file formats with little or no hassle.
For as much time as we spent discussing the merits of the applications, StarOffice's fluency in Office formats might be the most important thing to consider, and it does this part exceptionally well.
A Word on OpenOffice
As we mentioned at the beginning of this review, StarOffice has an open source cousin called OpenOffice. The two are practically the same software, but StarOffice comes with more in the way of clip art, extra fonts, a professional spell checker, and professional documentation. The other big difference is price — for a small business, StarOffice will cost $69.95 per seat, while OpenOffice is available as a free download.
So the big question is, of course, should you skip StarOffice and just grab the freebie?
It depends on whether any of those differences we mentioned matter to you, or if you think you'll need phone support. In our experience, people familiar with Word and Excel take to StarOffice and OpenOffice with little trouble. Someone just beginning to find his or her way around a computer might prefer to have the fallback option that a few months of phone support and more complete documentation offer. Otherwise, the freeware OpenOffice is a remarkable value. Even paying for a single license for StarOffice to learn it, then deploying OpenOffice to additional machines, will net you a good value.
Is It Right For You?
For small businesses, StarOffice is close to a can't-miss proposition. We have to qualify our endorsement a little because some businesses might want features available in Microsoft Office that StarOffice might not deliver (a grammar checker or closer integration with other Microsoft apps like Encarta, for instance). Any doubts you might have can be settled by looking at either OpenOffice or the 90-day free evaluation Sun offers.
If you're primarily concerned about expense, StarOffice or OpenOffice combined with a computer running Linux, which is available for free if you don't mind a slightly more stripped-down computing experience, make for a powerful combination for very little money.
Pros:
Inexpensive: Licenses run around $70 per seat
Simple: The interface is familiar to most Office veterans, easy for beginners
Comprehensive: Offers everything most office suites provide
Versatile: Handles varied file formats, runs on Linux and Windows
Cons:
Not the most feature-packed suite on the market, so it may not have a specific tool some businesses are used to in Office or other office suites
File imports from other formats, while excellent and generally accurate, aren't always perfect and might require a close examination before use
The most complex Microsoft VBA macros may not import to StarOffice cleanly
