Star Office 8 (PC/Linux)
£39.99
Great software, but time has moved on.... - Star Office was a great tool when we first adopted it in the mid-90 s - it would read and write Word files created under NT that Word itself was confused by. It would open and edit encrypted Office files, and more. Plus it did a great job. We bought a couple of updates over the years, although one office PC still has the original going strong on it. But.... in the last couple of years we have moved to OpenOffice.org because it is essentially the latest version of this software, only free, with automatic updates from the free software community that arrive at a rate that is hard to match.It IS good. But I would recommend that you download Open Office for free.
Great Value for Money - I ve been using OpenOffice for quite a while now, it was frustrating at first but just got better and better. I made the switch to StarOffice recently as I wanted a boxed version. I m really pleased with this distribution, which is tighter more professional than OpenOffice, it s not as polished as MS Office, but somehow more useful and powerful, less annoying. I ve not bothered with MS office for a while now, having left a version in the drawer since I can t get it to install on my new PC. From what I remember StarOffice is more compatible with older versions of office than Microsoft.[..]
Free is not always the best - As a small business owner I was looking for something affordable, easy-to-use and an all-in-one package - well look no futher. I am not a huge fan of Microsoft products however I work with so many companies that use it that I have no choice but to use it. NOT any more, since buying Star Office 8 I am a Microsoft free person.Every part of the Star Office 8 Suite is compatible with Microsoft, so all the work I have done to date is safe and retrievable. I can even save work in to Microsoft format to send to my colleagues, accountant etc. It also has a pre-installed PDF creator which writes PDF s to Adobe standard - not something that Microsoft does.A friend of mine recommended that I download the Open Office suite, which I did - the downloading was easy however I soon became stuck, I encountered some compatability issues and in order to get the latest version I had to keep downloading from the site. In addition as the Open Office Suite is constantly being worked on I found it was very unstable. I have spent a fortune on technical support as there is no support either. My advice, if you want an office suite that s not stable or bug free then go for it - be prepared to pay for the tech support though.My advice - spend the £50 on a proper suite and be safe in the knowledge that it is consumer friendly and stable [and it doesn t cost over £300 like some) - thank you Sun for simply the best office suite on the market.
The best office suite on the market - Fed up of paying over the odds for an office suite I decided to try something new. I had heard of Sun Microsystems before but only from a hardware and mobile phone technology standpoint. I was a bit sceptical at first, but within hours of getting installed and started I have to say I was proven wrong.The interface is clean and user-friendly [MS users you won t notice the difference]. The suite meets all my needs and more, covering every aspect of day-to-day business that I need with the added bonus of having a built in PDF creator plus it has great added extras like the clipart library that puts others to shame.The best part of the deal - well there are two. (1) It is fully compatible with MS - I can open all my old MS files and for those who don t have StarOffice I can save to MS so nothing lost. (2) The price - what other suite offers so much for so little. I would whole-heartedly recommend this to everyone and anyone who wants a simple-to-use / affordable office suite - give it a go
Pointless - you can get better for free - Star Office is a solid product, with standards-compliant default file formats and the ability to save in M$ Office formats when you need to exchange files with people who use that product, however OpenOffice (available from the appropriately titled openoffice.org for free) is a newer, easier-to-use version of the same product. Get that and save yourself fifty quid.