Star Office 8 (PC/Linux)

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   February 14, 2006
 27 out of 28 found this review helpful

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   December 26, 2005
 20 out of 48 found this review helpful

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.