"it wasn't an issue -- the police forces did not need the tight integration they need now in a post 9/11-world."

Ridiculous! Are you telling me MS Office and Star Office are so far apart it impacts police response to terrorism? What, they can't pick up a freakin' radio instead of reading a Word document about some Al Qaeda suspect? Not to mention that if the cops HAD the "tight integration" BEFORE 9/11, they wouldn't be so uptight now about everything that they have to shoot people for no competent reason.

Garbage! Tight integration, my butt! The only tightness is in the cops's butts when it comes to working with anything that seems remotely "free".

This is an irrelevant issue anyway. A minor contract with a public entity is lost, and the article is a FUD piece to even mention it in connection with the overall prospects of Star Office and OpenOffice. Both Microsoft and OSS lose contracts every day. So what else is new?

It does NOT raise issues about compatibility in the absence of any specific compatibility problems being cited. For all we know, the IT people are idiots who can't figure out how to overcome minor issues of document rendering.

There have been plenty of people on both sides saying that OpenOffice renders Office documents fine and others saying the opposite. It depends on your documents, your document policies, and who you are exchanging documents with.

Generalities about the issue are not useful. Neither is extrapolating specific issues to the overall viability of the products in the absence of statistics indicating the level of acceptance. Attempts to do are rightly labeled FUD.

Does anyone know where i can obtain the Star Office 8 beta. I need to buy an Office Suite for my PC and would like to try teh new version before committing to MS or Star Office.

StarOffice 8 beta program is finished. If you don't want to wait for the 90-day trial version, may I suggest you try www.openoffice.org where you can download the beta of Openoffice 2.0. You may not have to ' buy an office suite ' as this is free and pretty much the same as StarOffice 8.

I use 3 office suites MS office, Star Office 6 and the free one OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta. This office suite is a good one, works excellent the only draw back it has some small bugs. You can download it at OpenOffice. And it is comparable to any StarOffice progame.

This is the first time I visit this page and I must say it is rellay helpfull for the world comunity, brazilian too, the point of view about the Openoffice is not so positive yet for many of us but it is changing everyday here. Some universities ara introducing this alternative and as we "brauzcas" have more oportunity to choose WE CHOOSE!

tks,

Crixeno
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil!

YES, that is great news, the Community College I attend also installs OpenOffice.org, so we can choose also, however, on web-based classes, they usually require MS format (I think it's just ignorance, as many instructors simply do not know about OpenOffice).

OpenOffice.org 2 and star office 8 need to reduce the Java needs. many people complains about this. and hope that they hear it.

instead of just complaining about compatibility issue, why not submitting real bugs report
http://qa.openoffice.org...ing/project_issues.html
so openoffice.org know it and try to fix it in the next release.
without this the developments will not fast enough. but with your help reporting the problems such as compatibility issue we can hope that next versions will be much better.

I agree. I like OpenOffice, but I hate Java. It's riddled with problems on Windows-based machines. As a tech I see time and time again Java-based problems with web-access... and as a developer it's slow and painful. They should move on from Java, IMO. Shame they won't, as it's their own (Sun).

As I understand, there were some things that they found significantly easier to implement in Java then in OpenOffice.org's C++ (I think) code base.

It's not that they're insisting on using Java--anyone can feel free to come around and implement a Java-less version of whatever functionality themselves. But since Java is cross-platform, it works reasonably well--except that 2.0 requires it more than 1.x, and I belive OO.o is ported to more platforms than the JVM, and the JVM can be a large and flaky installation at times.

Yes that also the reason from SUN. but there is works to make it less java needed. but unfortunatelly the reasources/ external developer is very limited.
so This is an open call to all developers to help OpenOffice.org so it can become better by time.
please join the mailing list, help what you can help.
or at least report the problems you are facing. dont just waiting and complain but not reporting.
Thanks

MS and Active X

Sun and Java

hahahahaha everyone has their vices

Microsoft Student 2006
This is the newly released version, any version released before is corrupted or fake.
Very high speed download using eMule.

ed2k://|file|Student%202006-Ind.iso|3303495680|65541DA43CCEAD96C5748C53ED45B972|/

Interesting indeed. I myself use OpenOffice.Org, because it does what I need it to do, just fine too. Also because I support Open Source. If I want things to be compatable, I would ask MS to be more compatable with SO / Open Office than vice versa, since Open Office code is freely available. That's the nature of open source, it is becomming more widely used, so it is becomming more widely needed.

It is harder to support proprietary things than to support non-proprietary things. Central Scotland Police are asking the wrong people for compatability.

Actually, MS Office still holds some 90% of the market share. So it is a bit absurd to think that you would ask MS to be compatible with SO/OO. Especially since there is no real office document format standard yet. OpenDocument format was just ratified in May and not 'widely' implemented yet.

As for being proprietary, MS Office has started using XML since Office 2000. MS is also working on "Microsoft Office XML Open Format", although the success of it remains to be seen.

just a quick note about open formats : xml guarantees nothing. you can easily have binary streams inside of xml format. and that's exactly what microsoft are doing - basically, they just wrap their old format in xml tags - this way they can tout this as a big change towards opennes (though there is none) and at the same time change document format again ;)

In addition MS is looking to patent the process by which you access its XML documents. The goal one would expect to make it necessary for people to license the use of Word documents in non-MS software.

Here: http://www.microsoft.com...42D9&displaylang=en :)

sorry, I can't figure out how to view it on non-windows system.

Of course, the StarOffice they're replacing is most likely StarOffice 5, which was indeed awful and had lots of compatibility issues. The StarOffice versions based on OpenOffice didn't start until 6.0, in 2002, presumably well after Osama started eluding them due to other people's bullet points looking dodgy on their screens. (For those who aren't reading between the lines, the message here is "Open source helps terrorism," even though the version of StarOffice they were using wasn't open source at all.)

It seems likely that another upgrade cycle came around and they went to Microsoft saying "Hey, Sun quoted us this price... want to beat it and get some positive press?"

Open Office 2.0 is much improved over version 1.1 I'd recommend it to anyone not willing to spend $400 on an office suite.

wow, seems that fcassiagm has some personal issues against Microsoft. Perhaps got fired by MS or something?
fcassiagm, you probably haven't worked in a big corporation where multiple updates just to keep up with compatability is just not worth the efficiency hit.
no big organization will switch to a non-MS option just because they are a big MS hater like you. It all goes through vigorous planning, cost analysis, etc, before a decision that is deemed most cost effective is made.

menting, just as many, if not MORE security & compatibility updates have been released for Office 2000 (available when the Police switched). Even the latest MS Office has at least half a dozen patches required.

Cost effective? At $500AU per license for Office 2003 Pro, I'd pick StarOffice for the win. Better yet, OpenOffice is a best pick, if you don't need a database program.

and your complaint is security patches? Well, I would hope that MS continues to put out patches with it's products. To think that developing a software program in 2003 would not need any updates in 2005 is ignorance. Things change and people are corrupt.

Actually Tenoq, if you check out the new OpenOffice beta, it includes a database program. Thew new beta even has a "VB-like" Macro engine. I've been running it for a few months now and I love it. I uninstalled MS Office 03 and use OO.org only now. I'm satisfied.

Big deal, 400-PC contract... SO7 still rules

I don't know why this writer makes a big stink out of Sun losing a "400 machines" customer.

I find the following paragraph specially amusing, if not laughable altogether:

"The police force switched 400 Windows-based computers from Office to StarOffice in 2000. However, post September 11, compatibility issues between the two competing office suites caused communications problems, so the group recently signed a 500-computer contract to deploy Microsoft Office 2003."

So they switched in 2000, and "POST SEPTEMBER 11" they experienced compatibility problems? What does SEPTEMBER 11 have to do with compatibility problems?. Osama and the Twin Towers caused it?.

I also wonder if the folks at the police force who deployed StarOffice 7 are aware that Sun has RELEASED FIVE PRODUCT UPDATES to StarOffice 7 since the original release, which are available as a FREE DOWNLOAD, and which IMPROVED COMPATIBILITY A LOT, to keep it on par with the updates to OpenOffice 1.x over these years.

The last update is StarOffice 7 PRODUCT UPDATE 4-02, and dated APRIL 21 this year, available as a free download for existing staroffice 7 users from here:
http://sunsolve.sun.com/...ice&nav=pub-patches

In short: this is a FUD article, apparently only intended to make readers wary and skeptical of StarOffice 7, while in fact the v7 release has received numerous updates that solved plenty of the "compatibility issues", and that StarOffice 8 will be, imho, a Microsoft Office killer, both on price/features and the cross-platform (linux, windows, unix) support.

Ed, please do a better job next time.

To: fcassiagm

Please do some research before saying "this is a FUD article, apparently only intended to make readers wary and skeptical of StarOffice 7."

Read a similar report here: http://www.infoworld.com...HNscottishpolice_1.html

People tend to forget TCO when they compare between software products. In the "Central Scotland Police" case, apparently the TCO for StarOffice became higher than MS Office. So they switched. Simple economics.

Deploying product updates is not always easy for large organizations. It involves rigorous testing, scheduled downtime, additional man-power, etc. So the fact that these updates are available for free download is really beside the point here.

fcassiagm-
Thanks for reading. The compatibility issues were magnified by September 11th, but were experienced before as well.

However at the time, it wasn't an issue -- the police forces did not need the tight integration they need now in a post 9/11-world. However, after that event, the problems became magnified resulting in the police force switching back to Windows.

I will give you one thing, the paragraph was somewhat misleading. However, at the same time -- the reason why the Central Scotland Police stopped using StarOffice WAS compatibility issues.

Our research indicated that this was one of StarOffice's bigger *non-linux* customers. Losing the CSP does raise questions as to the viability of SO on non-linux machines, especially when compatibility is an issue.

Now, SO8 is supposed to fix those issues so we'll see what happens.

Thanks again for reading BetaNews,
Ed Oswald

The one thing that jumps out at me here that a major reason for the switch is the "need to interoperate more smoothly with other departments running Windows".
What are we saying here? That due to Microsoft's undocumented &/or patented document formats, that competitors can't provide effective compatibility? Doesn't this reduce competition?

Microsoft doesn't have obligations to open up their format (and not illegal either).

even though there are legislative means to regulate monopolies, unfortunately there are almost no countries that would enforce these measures to microsoft (even though they are very fast at jumping at players in other industries - in some more than 40% of the market is considered a monopoly, that is, some or all restrictions/regulations apply), as it clearly is a monopoly with a market share >90% (approx, speaking about workstations here).

open formats might be one of these requirements, as other things might be, too.

Well this is not anywhere near the biggest - how about 5000 desktops in Bristol City Council?

500 licenses? That's like a whole $50,000-$100,000 or something right? These companies are worth millions, or billions. :/

More like $25,000. I think Sun gave business a $50 per desktop deal on StarOffice. When you purchase it at Amazon.com, it's something around $70usd. So even purchasing those SO7 copies boxed at Amazon.com would have costed the police force $35,000 as the highest price.

I think this article is FUD, carefully spinned by Redmond spin doctors. Just what MSFT's PR department need to "prove" to customers worldwide that their "solution" is much better than Sun's.

I don't get it. A mere 500 licenses is considered enough to delay SO's release? Wow. Also, what the heck does the destruction of two commercial buildings on 9-11-01 have to do with the folks in Scotland? Anyone? Maybe they just didn't see a future with SO.

Maybe someone at Microsoft UK was very angry and worked to "convince" the people in charge of Scotland Police's IT department that Microsoft's solution was "much better".

Unless you live inside a cookie jar, you must know that Microsoft is VERY agressive and in some instances is willing to "give their software away for free" or give alike monetary enticements to make a prominent customer dump alternative software and get back to the MSFT camp. (I've known about this with Lotus Notes customers and MSFT giving them an unbelievable deal to make them switch to Exchange).

I guess those bombings just next door in England don't mean much of anything either, huh?

I ask again, what does terrorism have to do with software compatibility? So now the terrorists have declared Jihad on Open Source software? jeez.

Perhaps you would like to compare notes, exchange (pardon the pun) calendars, set meetings, you know, all the things you do in a halfway large organization. "Nigel, we think there is a correlation between corn flakes and UBL movements. See the attached presentation"

Having this in this format, that in that, me on Outlook and Exchange, you on, well gee, whatever you choose to run for communication with SO. Well let's just say that outside linux organizations, SO/OO isn't really a contender. Especially when you try to convert an existing Office organization.

I have Microsoft Office 2003 Pro and Star Office 7.0. I switched to Star Office 7.0 and put the MS Office disk away, a year before switching to Linux for an O/S. Personally, I didn't find the switch to be particularly difficult, but that would vary with the user, I think. Anyway, I've had no complaints about Star Office at all. Just an opinion, based on my personal experience with both.

Who cares? Microsoft isn't due to release another version of Office before September, and I doubt this is going to adversely affect the suite.

I've never used StarOffice, but I have used OpenOffice.org. I don't know what the difference is supposed to be between them except perhaps actual support, but I think there are bigger issues than release dates if it wants to compete against Office. Version 2 is a step in the right direction (when it's finally released), but many users may turn away from 1.x simply beause it's ugly and hard to figure out, especially for switchers. For example, many menu items are in ununsual places and called unusual things for Windows users--e.g., in version 1, Windows users can't File | Print Preview like they'd expect. (I'm not saying it has to be the same as Office, but it should fit into generally accepted Windows naming schemes and menu item locations.)

For the record, OO.o is my primary office suite--in fact, I don't even own Microsoft Office myself. It works great, and I found compatibility with Office to be excellent; it also has some handy features, like PDF export. But many non-geeks like my sister have a hard time using it.

I think this delay is good if it lets them work on improvements.

are you hinting that there are people who are unable to grasp "page preview" might be something similar to "print preview" ? :)

i really don't think these small changes in menu commands are the biggest problem (especially as oo.org/so usually is somewhat better in intuitivity and logical placement, for example, format->page is a lot better than file->page setup) - you can easily find out these things and become efficient within minutes regarding particular function.

bigger problems are change/note management, some spreadsheet functionality etc, though you always have to evaluate situation at hand to determine how appropriate every alternate solution might be.