Lab computer users have downloaded nearly 2,000 copies of StarOffice, an office productivity suite that runs on multiple operating systems, including Solaris Operating Environment, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. Developed by Sun Microsystems, the office suite contains full-featured applications including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and database capabilities.

The Lab’s Computing Infrastructure Support (CIS) Department is sponsoring an evaluation of StarOffice as part of an ongoing program to evaluate alternative applications and systems. The evaluation, explained on the CIS Web site is being coordinated by a steering committee of users and computer support staff.

StarOffice features a lower purchase price than competing products and, unlike Microsoft’s announcement last year to start charging in advance for upgrades, StarOffice allows users to upgrade as needed. The Lab currently has a site license for StarOffice, which can be obtained from the software download site.

John Staples, a scientist in the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, is a proponent of StarOffice who has been using the suite of tools for the past couple of years. Staples’ primary computer runs the Linux operating system, but he needs to be able to exchange Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with other researchers.

“The exchange of MS Office documents is essential to my work, including PowerPoint, Word and Excel,” said Staples, a member of the evaluation steering committee. “I get and must deliver such formats frequently with my collaborators and when I author presentations and publications.”

While the StarOffice Web page, claims the applications are “fully compatible” with Microsoft’s software, there are some issues users should be aware of.

“Two areas of weakness are in embedded equations, which sometimes don't come out quite right, and the time required to launch StarOffice 6.0,” Staples said. “The fonts are now pretty good, but Microsoft fonts are generally re-named in StarOffice, which may be a little confusing to the MS user.”

Staples said that PowerPoint-type presentations he makes in StarOffice look fine in PowerPoint. “StarOffice also allows lots of fancy stuff, like text animation, etc., which works fine in PowerPoint, so I am not restricted to just simple presentations.”

Joyce Cordell, who works in Environmental Energy Technologies and is also part of the StarOffice evaluation committee, has also been testing StarOffice, creating files using Microsoft applications and converting them to StarOffice.

“The main issue I find is StarOffice does not like headers and footers and is not too fond of tables,” she said. “The PRD/P2R file had a few font problems. In addition, I saved two PowerPoint files in StarOffice presentation software, one file being pretty vanilla and the other having lots of animation, graphics, etc. It actually handled both really well. There were some formatting issues but nothing major. Once a text file is saved in StarOffice, I couldn't open it again in MS Office. I have a couple of scientists working with StarOffice drawing program and have gotten good reports."

As a test, Staples installed the StarOffice suite on his Linux computer, which dual-boots Windows. Under Microsoft Windows, the suite seems well integrated. “Therefore, it would appear to be a reasonable office suite replacement for Microsoft Office,” Staples said. “But there is a steep learning curve for MS users, as many things are done differently. Several comprehensive manuals have been published, as well as a free downloadable 462-page manual in PDF format for SO 6.0, published by Sun.”

Mark Rosenberg, head of the Computing Infrastructure Technology Group and also a member of the evaluation committee, has had mixed results moving files between Microsoft and StarOffice applications.

“In my experience, the main problems are conversion of documents,” Rosenberg said. “StarOffice works for simple documents but not for many complex documents. I also have a difficult time figuring out how to do some functions at all in StarOffice that are quick and easy in MS Office – and that was after I read the documentation.”

Here are examples of charts created by Rosenberg in Microsoft Excel, then converted using StarOffice and converted back to Excel.

Read the UC Berkeley Evaluation of StarOffice.