Google has dropped StarOffice from the Google Pack, with no explanation as to why. This is a shame.
There are, however, other free alternatives to MS Office available.
For those of you out there that simply must have MS Office, have a look at Microsoft’s Ultimate Steal program – Office 2007 Ultimate for $60 if you have (or know someone who has) an email address that ends in .edu.
Following three years of continuous improvement, OpenOffice.org has now released as of this week the landmark version 3.0, with a host of new features.
OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Follow our previously posted directions for making OpenOffice.org 3 save in Microsoft-compatible file formats by default. The procedure is still the same for this new release.
An update to the Lotus Symphony 1.0 release came out this week. According to the release notes, features have been added, the suite’s memory footprint has been reduced, and there are several bug fixes. Check it out!
Edit 10/18/2008:
The Symphony Blog lists more “how-to” videos for Lotus Symphony users.
This is a free office suite which will run on Windows 95 and newer Microsoft operating systems. It consists of:
TextMaker for Windows - The Microsoft Word-compatible word processor that’s so easy to use that you’ll wonder why you bothered with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org for so long.
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PlanMaker for Windows - The Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet that opens all your Excel workbooks directly and gives you many time-saving features.
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There is no presentation (PowerPoint-like) component. Nonetheless, we are really liking this suite for its versatility and simplicity. It is more capable than AbiWord and much lighter and quicker to open than OpenOffice.org or Lotus Symphony.
It also has another neat feature - after installation, a start menu link is created which allows the suite to be copied to a USB flash drive as a portable application. You CAN take it with you!
Details and a download link can be found here. The suite is fully-functional, non-crippled, and not time-limited.
After installation, click on Extras, Preferences…
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…and then click on the File tab at the top of the Preferences window. The second drop-down menu (as shown below) allows the default file format to be set to your choice of Microsoft Office-compatible formats. You’ll need to do this in both TextMaker and PlanMaker.
TextMaker documents will then be saved with a .doc extension, and PlanMaker spreadsheets will be saved with a .xls extension automatically by default so they can be shared with Microsoft Office users.
Edit 11/14/2008:
Lifehacker has discovered this suite! Outstanding! Maybe it will start getting the recognition it deserves!
Actually, it has been out of beta for about a month.
IBM says:
IBM Lotus Symphony tools enable users to create, edit and share word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
This is a free office suite that, while not as feature-rich as OpenOffice, is still more than most home users will ever need. It will save in MS Office 2003 (and previous) formats. It is supported on XP and Vista, and a couple of different flavors of Linux.
Here’s the direct download link…
After you’ve installed it, setting it up to save in Microsoft Office-compatible formats is easy. Open IBM Lotus Symphony, and select File, Preferences from the Menu Bar:
After the Preferences window opens, expand the IBM Lotus Symphony tree in the left pane by clicking the “plus-in-a-box”, and then click File Type Association as shown below:
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Select Microsoft Office from the drop-down labeled Select the file types to automatically create with IBM Lotus Symphony. Then click the Apply and OK buttons. Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that you create with IBM Lotus Symphony will then be saved automatically in formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) that will allow you to share them with users of Microsoft Office.
IBM also has short online streaming video tutorials on how to use IBM Lotus Symphony Document, Presentation, and Spreadsheet applications. The main page containing these tutorials in different downloadable formats can be found here.
The IBM Lotus Symphony Help Page has links to longer slideshow-type tutorials, reference cards, and other information.
Curtis Franklin, Jr. wrote an IBM Lotus Symphony review (the article also reviews OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, and Zoho and includes a slideshow…) for InfoWorld that can be found here.
Newsday’s Lou Dolinar wrote a short review as well.
The Investintech website (this company sells PDF conversion software) recently posted a good article about free MS Word alternatives - including web-based applications.
This serves not only as an informational presentation about good office freeware but also as a test of a new Google Docs feature that allows Powerpoint presentations to be imbedded in blogs and webpages. Note that the three suites mentioned (OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and IBM Lotus Symphony) that can create presentations will all save those presentations in .ppt format. In fact, the presentation shown was created in StarOffice using a free downloaded template before being uploaded to Google Docs.
A full-screen version of this presentation is available here for those that are interested.
Need more information? Here’s a great article from PC Magazine on The Best Office Alternatives.
Edit 11/22/2008:
Google has dropped StarOffice from the Google Pack, with no explanation as to why.
Josh Catone writes for Read/WriteWeb:
“These are my choices for the best of breed online word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, calendar, email app, groupware, file storage, RSS reader, contact manager, and to do list.”
A similar article from the same site and author is called Rolling Your Own Online Office. It was written earlier this year and has some good suggestions as well.
This accompanies our recent posts entitled The top 100 Webware sites for 2007 and the list of one hundred free online applications.
From the Unofficial Google Operating System blog:
Google Pack, the collection of applications recommended by Google, includes a new software: StarOffice, an office suite developed by Sun. In 2000 Sun released StarOffice’s source code, which became the foundation of OpenOffice.org, an open source project sponsored by Sun.
The posting has full details. StarOffice normally sells for about $70, but Google is making it available for free.
StarOffice is very similar to OpenOffice.org. For a list of differences, see the OpenOffice.org FAQ along with the StarOffice FAQ.
As we’ve stated here before, either would be a good choice for 90% of the office suite users out there.
Edit 08/14/2007:
Ryan over at CyberNet News has a good article on this as well.
Why can’t I see all the available programs on the Google Pack homepage? If you cannot see StarOffice as one of the choices at http://pack.google.com, go to Add/Remove Programs, uninstall the Google Updater and then visit http://pack.google.com again and follow the directions there to download.
Also, Google has verified that the Google Updater and all of the available Google Pack software may be legitimately used in a business environment. See the response by the Google Pack Guide in this discussion. We make this important distinction because many freeware licenses stipulate home or non-commercial use only.
In order to install the Google Updater and the programs offered through Google Pack (including StarOffice), please use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or above or Mozilla Firefox 1.0 or above. You must also have Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista with administrator privileges on your computer.
Edit 11/22/2008:
Google has dropped StarOffice from the Google Pack, with no explanation as to why.
Etan Horowitz writes for the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. His column for Saturday, July 7 listed three free alternatives to Microsoft Office.
“OpenOffice.org is downloadable software that is nearly identical to Office. The programs have catchy names “Writer” for word processing, “Calc” for spreadsheets, and “Impress” for presentations. If everyone had to create PowerPoint-like presentations using a program called “Impress,” I think we’d all be better off. I was able to do virtually everything I could do in Office, such as create pivot tables from spreadsheets and add animations to slides. If you want free software that operates the most like Microsoft Office, this is it.”
Mr. Horowitz is absolutely correct in his assessment, in our humble opinion. OpenOffice.org is the ticket, and it can be downloaded for free by clicking this button:
Be sure to see our post on Configuring the OpenOffice.org suite for use in a Microsoft Office world for instructions on how to easily set OpenOffice.org up to save files in the default Microsoft formats. This will make it much easier to exchange files with Microsoft Office users.