OpenOffice.org vs. StarOffice vs. MS Office
Update: (Oct 13, 07) A nice program to get similar features to StarOffice in OpenOffice.org is OxygenOffice Professional which adds templates, cliparts, fonts, samples, etc. to OpenOffice.org. The best thing about it is that as of OpenOffice.org 2.3 you can install these as extensions for your current OpenOffice.org installation.
OpenOffice.org vs. StarOffice
I did a small personal research on the differences between Sun Microsystems open source OpenOffice.org and the commercial version (StarOffice). Later I got StarOffice, opened both office suits and compared them. I though some of you may want to know the difference too.
First of all I should mention that StarOffice is free for educational institutions but it can only be used on the institution's computers. Other users can buy StarOffice. When you buy StarOffice you get one package for all platforms. There are two major differences between the two suits:
- StarOffice comes with support from Sun Microsystems. This is important for commercial users. Some IT managers decide to get one or more copies of StarOffice for help desk and use the free OpenOffice for other computers.
- StarOffice included a database program. I don't really use databases so I haven't even tried it.
And there are also some minor differences:
- StarOffice has way more templates than OpenOffice. But you can always get more templates off the Internet, right?
- StarOffice has more gallery items than OpenOffice. I don't know if this is because of the license or download size but then again OpenOffice has quite a lot of items in the gallery so personaly this is not an issue for me.
- I've heard that StarOffice has a better spell check. I can't say this for sure because I use Canadian English and the dictionary that I use with OpenOffice is great. I didn't see the need to download and use the StarOffice dictionary.
- Some small features (I only found one and it was opening Word Perfect documents) can not be put in the open source suit due to licencing issues.
But in general basically all features are exactly the same in
both suits. As a student I can get either one for free but I use
OpenOffice.
I think Sun's intention is to sell support with the paid version.
Other differences are really just licencing issues.
I prefer to use news groups or Google to get support rather than waiting for responce from customer service. They always just waste my time by answering basic questions. So I don't know about you but for me even the support is not usefull at all.
OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office
Advantages
- Both OpenOffice and StarOffice will run on Windows, Macintosh, Linux and other Unix-based systems.
- OpenOffice is a lot less buggy than Microsoft Office.
- OpenOffice is completely free and open source and StarOffice is free for educational purposes.
- There are some cool features (like autocomplete) in OpenOffice that MS Office doesn't have. MS Office has lots of features than OpenOffice doesn't have but studies have shown only expert users use them and only at certain times.
- Most Linux distributions already come with OpenOffice.
- While MS Office is more popular now, OpenOffice has a better future! It is improving very fast. Its 1.1 version was much superior than 1.0 while in MS Office you seen major improvements every 5 years or so.
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Disadvantages
- While support for MS Office documents. has really improved certain features "may" not work properly in OpenOffice. However, while OpenOffice documents are open and anybody can make a filter for them Microsoft tries to change the filter often so other programs can't open them. In fact older MS Office programs will not function as good as OpenOffice so in a way this is an advantage really.
- OpenOffice doesn't come with many templates and Artwork. If you need artworks you should try StarOffice. Of course if you download OpenOffice this will be an advantage for you!
- While the interfaces are very much a like some users may still find them different. This is not specific to OpenOffice or Linux and I haven't figured out why!
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