This review is pretty high level, focusing on the features of the applications and how they compare to Microsoft Office. "StarOffice matches all the core features in Microsoft Office while providing a more logical and streamlined interface than Microsoft's labyrinthine menus. As a drop-in replacement for Office, it is better than anything else at opening Office documents with all formatting and features intact, and it improves on Microsoft with built-in PDF output features." Overall, the
review highlights StarOffice as a the best alternative to Microsoft Office.
Jeff Bertolucci gives StarOffice 8 a rating of 7.0 out 10 -- or 'Very Good.' Bertolucci highlights StarOffice as a "solid productivity suite that costs a fraction of the price of its main competitor, Microsoft Office 2003." He notes the new features and tools including the graphics tools, database and presentation applications. He also points out the ease of installation and limited use of disk space.
Sean Doherty of Network Computing writes a glowing stand-alone review of StarOffice 8. In his review, Doherty states that StarOffice is a wonderful alternative to Microsoft Office. He notes that new features and increased functionality coupled with a cost effective price make this version of StarOffice worth purchasing.
Sun has done a remarkable job with StarOffice, building a suite of software that in many ways matches -- and in some cases exceeds -- the far more expensive Microsoft Office. At a top price of $100 per seat and much lower prices for volume purchases, StarOffice 8 is far cheaper than Microsoft's product. Sun has not, however, lowered the cost by skimping on features. The suite comes with Writer; Impress, a presentation program; Calc, a spreadsheet program; Draw; Base, a database program; and Math. If you buy the enterprise toolkit, you also get a set of tools to help with back-end installation and migration issues. In the end, you may choose to have a combination of Microsoft Office and Sun StarOffice. And you can do so knowing that you are providing those who use StarOffice 8 with an outstanding alternative.
In a very positive review, Jason Brooks of eWEEK raves about the StarOffice 8, claiming it "stands up better than ever next to Microsoft Corp.'s market-leading Office in terms of features, extensibility and compatibility. " He was "pleased" with the Writer, Calc, Impress and Base functions and "experienced generally good results opening and creating Microsoft Office-formatted documents with StarOffice." He adds that, "while a move to StarOffice or OpenOffice.org needn't accompany a migration away from Windows, these suites can pave the way to such a move in the future--a measure of flexibility that one can't expect from Microsoft and Office."
