[Gllug] "Intro to the shell" talk slides up... (and StarOffice and UKUUG)

[Xander D Harkness]

Thought I would give some feedback on my use of Star Office as requested.

Compatibility:
    Better compatibility with M$ documents than M$ has.  No complaints 
that word would throw out saying you must upgrade or incompatible 
version.  In fact I rather enjoy that Star Office does not even complain 
about passworded M$ Word files - just opens them without blinking :-). 
 Star office files are considerably smaller that the equivalent word 
files, even when saved in .doc format.  There is occasionally slight 
misalignment of tables but nothing to drastic.

    Spreadsheet has again excellent compatibility with almost all areas 
of Excel, even with those "real or fake boob tests".xls that have been 
floating about (to the great amusement of all - especially the females 
in the office)
   
    Where Star Office scores highly especially compared to Koffice is 
the ability to save as xls files (I know that gnumeric does this too). 
 I realise that KDE and others would say that it would be better to save 
as csv or rtf; however we do not have a common standard.  I would have 
thought it sensible for OpenOffice, Koffice and Gnome to get together to 
agree a common standard using xml.  They would lose little by doing so 
and having a common standard for all three suites would result in large 
gains for all.  Too sensible though - people working together Tut tut!!

    Presentation again scores highly for compatibility.  Good to see the 
Sun guys who come here using this for their presentations.  I would have 
liked to have seen them use Linux on their laptops rather than M$ stuff. 
 (IBM using so much M$ stuff to present their Linux endeavours at the 
Expo gave me the right hump as well!!)

    Email is compatible on pop3, the imap4 support is sucky, it loses 
mail, displays incorrect messages etc. etc.

Ease of use:
    Easier than M$ Office 2000.  How can I say that - many of us have 
many years of experience with M$ Office products and they run similarly. 
 I do not want to mistake ease of use for familiarity.  I have had 
people who are new to using computers use both and every time they have 
been happier using Linux and Staroffice "It just seems more logical" 
 Irrespective of these opinions it is evident that there in day to day 
use little difference in functional operation for normal users. 
(ignoring speed issues).  - M$ Office has the paper clip, Star Office 
has the Help Agent; M$' I believe is easier for the layman to turn off. 
 I very much like the preview abilities built into the mail application 
(that we also see in Evolution and works very well in the Outlooks)

Speed:
    M$ office wins hands down.

Stability:
    Stability has improved for Office in OfficeXP (They have included a 
special save and recovery feature for when Office XP crashes too :-).  I 
still find Star Office very stable.  I have had one crash in the last 8 
months.

Other features:

    Addressbook is badly laid out, does not integrate well and is not 
easily used, it would be better to give 1 or 2 alternatives when 
auto-completing email addresses.

    Star Office server: I have seen a couple of posts for people who had 
data corruption.  I have had a server up for a couple of years.  I agree 
the upgrade of 5.1 to 5.2 was not smooth, however I and my friends who 
have accounts on my server are able to get their calenders from anywhere 
- even through firewalls using ssh port redirection. It is a shame that 
the addressbook does not allow remote logins as the tasks and calender 
does.  It would also be really cool to have a web front end for this. 
 It would take it to exchange standards.

    Palm sync is a killer application, that I can syncronise my palm 
across the internet with my server at home is excellent.  It works very 
well with the Star Office server. When I first got my palm I tried it 
out on both Linux and windows.  Windows was an easier install but the 
palm software was incredibly unstable.  It would crash on sync or hang. 
 It was pathetic.  The sync software for Linux such as jpilot or kpilot 
or the gnome sync tools were all stable (some two years later have still 
not hit 1.0 release!).  In addition the syncronisation with email is 
poor under windows.  I complained to Palm and they told me to buy some 
third party software.  This is one reason why they will lose to M$.  The 
Ipaq's and other stuff all come compatible for syncing with windows. 
Star sync is some of the best sync software there for speed, 
compatibility and flexibility.

Kind regards
Xander



Richard Cohen wrote:

>
>StarOffice reminder - I need feedback (the marketing folks want nice stuff -
>I'll take anything) on StarOffice to pass on.  Good result here will
>probably result in more free CDs (and possibly other things) later, so if
>you're bothered...
>
>Cheers
>Richard
>
>



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