Customer Reviews
Satisfactory performance 
2007-03-22
Version 7 is about 90+% compatible with MS Office. For the price it is a good value.
About memory hogging accusations-not really 
2006-05-29
Mr./Ms. BM_NINADA said that StarOffice hoggs memory.
I am using OpenOffice 2.0.
I am looking at my consumption at this very momemnt having one machine running MS Word the other OpenOffice .
OpenOffice uses 60Meg, the MS Word uses 30Meg. In big scheme of things it is insignificant difference. I have 1G of memory so we talking about difference between one using 3 and the other 6 percent.
One difference of note between OO and StarOffice 
2006-01-29
I suspect there are other minor differences not mentioned here or below, but I wanted to mention one difference for Japanese Speakers using OO or StarOffice.
The popular office package from Just Systems, in particular the word processing package "Ichitaro," remains a standard in Japan. In particular many official documents are drafted and circulated in this format. (The Courts and certain national and regional bureacratic offices come to mind.)
Unfortunately, there is no "free" import filter available in the current releases of OpenOffice. However, the StarOffice release includes a filter that was developed under contract and release by Sun. This provides an important incentive to purchase the StarOffice package for anyone doing commerical copywork or translation.
Development of a filter continues but as of January 2006, nothing is released (on the authors research).
As regards, the quality and usability of the product from this bilingual with significant professional experience in U.S. and Japanese business, my experience is dumping MS Office and using either StarOffice or Openoffice is unlikely to present significant problems.
I began using the product in the pre-release stage and has used it since alongside MS and other products. There have been occasional data corruption and other problems. However in the course of doing translation with different versions of Word documents and codesets, there have been more problems using MS products. I trust my professional work on the Sun products no less (or more) than the MS products.
Incidently, the Just System Ichitaro has never given me data corruption problems but I have never used it as heavily as the MS or Sun products.
Copyright 2006 James Miller
StarOffice Rocks! 2005-10-03
StarOffice 7 is just as good as Microsoft Office, for a fraction of the cost. I am well pleased with the product.
A fan of open-source but still ... 2005-09-17
I went through the reviews posted here and it's a like a mountain of praise to a sea of tears! Anyways, as a brief 'bout myself: I love to use open-source products, know quite a bit about software and applications, etc.
There's ONE CRITICAL aspect of Star Office/Open Office which has caused me to DUMP the software: Usage of available memory. I have verified in 3 machines running Pentium server-racks, notebook, Centrino and all having at least 256 Mb/512 Mb of RAM this product is definitely a memory hogger. Task manager continuously shows Star Office at top of the list in terms of Mem. consumption. ALL other applications - slow down.
Finally, let's admit 1 thing: You can NOT beat MS-Excel - period. I think that's the BEST EVER product of Microsoft other than MS-DOS. So, those having to work in Excel extensively - please stick to Microsoft.
Why I give 3? Any product hogging that much memory - is bad: period. It's NOT a server, don't tell me crap that there's Java and etc. - it's not doing OLTP : So? Esp. if this hogging affects ALL other applications I run: For ex.: Firefox/IE; Outlook;MS-Project, etc. ~ Then sorry!!
Not worth a star *** 
2005-07-30
Full-featured multi-platform office suite with wordprocessing spreadsheet presentation graphics and database applications.Product InformationStarOffice 7 Office Suite is the world's leading office productivity suite onLinux and the Solaris OS and the lea
A Non-Monopolistic Alternative to MS Office! 2005-06-03
Whether you're a power office suite user or just someone who dabbles in spreadsheets and word processing documents, this product covers your bases! With the new copy protection schemes in all the Microsoft Office products, it's no longer possible to use the same copy of MS Office at work and at home. That reduces your options to 1) paying a lot for an office suite for home use, or 2) searching for an alternative. I chose the second option, and I'm glad I did.
First of all, StarOffice 7.0 actually reads and writes most Microsoft Office documents perfectly without "converting" them or taking them through a filter. This means you'll have seamless read/write capability on documents prepared by MS Office users.
You'll have a powerful spreadsheet that finally gives you a cut and paste function without the quirkiness of the one in Excel, and which provides 98% of the functionality of Excel. You'll have a fantastic word processor that comes with tons of fonts and a look and feel that's very similar to MS Word. You'll have a fantastic drawing program, and you'll have a presentation tool that rivals MS PowerPoint. Oh... and one more thing you'll have... a few extra c-notes in your pocket.
I have used Microsoft Office XP and StarOffice, and to be honest, the Office XP is a more refined interface and has a bit more polish on it, but SUN has come close to the MS Office product's look and feel, and has given us StarOffice at a very attractive price. Plus, they've chosen to omit the crazy hardware-level copy protection scheme that Microsoft "threw in" with MS Office.
You'll be impressed... It's clean, doesn't "take over" your system, runs great, and gives you a full-blown office suite at a fraction of the cost.
I would have given 5 stars, but there are OCCASIONALLY formatting inconsistencies that cause Word documents to have a slightly different appearance in StarOffice.
MS office compatibility isn't perfect 2005-03-03
I have heard that equations entered in the writing program do not transfer to MS word. When opening in MS word, the equations are simple missing. Also, complicated formulas in the spreadsheet software do not translate well. Saving a MS excel program in the staroffice format can mess up the formulas. Also, graphs set on a separate sheet do not show up nicely on Staroffice. Just some considerations. Otherwise it seems to work well. If you need to go from MS office to Staroffice regularly, it might be better to stick with MS office.
Exvcellent for the money. 2005-03-01
Star Office 7.0 has been hugely improved since I tried it a couple of years ago. The interface is tidier and the font rendition is much clearer. Setting up styles for laying out text is straightforward and it's good, that when using two monitors, the style list can be placed onto the other screen out of the way. This can also be done when working on two separate documents of the same or different types. A spreadsheet on one screen and a word processor document on the other, for example.
Another useful feature is the 'Export to .pdf' option so that any document can be sent to a recipient, confident that it can be opened and viewed as intended.
Star Office 7.0 is a good choice for many users at a very modest cost.
Great intuitive software 2005-02-15
I'm very happy with my SO7, it's saved me heaps of time with
my thesis and I can switch quickly between my Linux and Windoze
boxes with the documents. Would recommend it to anyone that
wants a full featured office suite at a very acceptable price.
