Sun would like to think it can succeed where others have failedÃ,­—in breaking Microsoft’s stranglehold on the office productivity market—by offering a product that’s almost as good as Microsoft Office at a much lower price. Do the sums add up?

StarOffice version 6 is not a direct competitor to Microsoft Office XP, whether it is the Standard or Professional edition. However, StarOffice is a suite of office tools for the user who does not need all the additional bells and whistles of Microsoft’s Office suite.

It could be argued that most users do not need or will never use many of the features in either product, and this makes a compelling case for the considerably less expensive StarOffice. However, Office is the most widely used suite and as a consequence most documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are in Office’s proprietary format. While StarOffice imports most simple files without any problems, as the files become more complex, problems start to creep in.

So in essence, for SOHO use where file importing is not a huge issue StarOffice is a very strong contender. For power users, or indeed organisations with MS Office well and truly entrenched, there are strong reasons not to move to StarOffice.

Office politics Introduction 1. Microsoft Office XP 2. Sun StarOffice v6.0 About RMIT

So where does that leave those wondering if an upgrade from Office 2000 to Office XP is worth the money? We did not find any compelling reason to upgrade from Word 2000; 2002 includes some nice features, but will you use them? Excel and PowerPoint on the other hand have some neat features that may just make the upgrade a far more attractive proposal.

MS Office XP Professional

Installing the suite proved to be quite painless, less than 10 minutes for the initial installation of the software and then another minute or so when firing up one of the applications for the first time. At this point Office initialises itself and the user must go through Microsoft’s contentious registration procedure. If you do not register the product with Microsoft, it will only run with full functionality 50 times.

A typical installation of the suite consumes around 83MB of disk space, the full installation around 310MB and just installing Word, Excel, and Power Point consumes just 23MB of disk space.

MS Office has been literally stuffed with features for quite some time now, and let’s face it: how many of us actually use more than a small proportion of the feature set in our day-to-day work? So it comes as no great surprise, as you will see, that the added features list is not enormous, although some are actually quite useful.

Word 2002
The new Word interface generally holds no surprises when compared to the old, although the large Task Pane down the right hand side is the immediately obvious exception. The look of the interface has been mildly tweaked with some slight changes to graphics here and there, but in essence the feel remains the same.

Our first test was to import our large Word 2000 test document, which loaded with all its formatting perfectly intact. It then came down to simply playing with the new features. We then sent files back to Word 2000 and again found no nasty surprises, for which we breathed a sigh of relief.

The Task Pane can be configured for a number of functions from simple document management, much like the File menu, to Styles and Formatting and also language translation (from English to Spanish or French and back the other way as well). The feature appears limited from our simple testing, and if you want to translate an entire slab of text, Office subtly suggests translating via the Web.

Office politics Introduction 1. Microsoft Office XP 2. Sun StarOffice v6.0 About RMIT

The Styles and Formatting pane is quite useful, as it displays all the formatting currently in use through the document. Selecting one of the formats from the pane gives a quick tally of how many times the format occurs in the document and the option to modify the style or update it to match a selection. It is particularly useful if you need to track down each instance of a particular type of formatting, for instance italicised text, or apply a simple global change to convert them all from italic to bold.

I have grumbled in the past when I have been unable to select several noncontiguous blocks of text to apply a change. After all, in Excel, holding down the control key allows you to select discontiguous cells; now the same mechanism works in Word.

Smart Tags are in effect action tags that can be attached to words, but at first glance appear to be a solution waiting for a problem. But it has the potential to be very handy. Word 2002 by default has eight types of smart tags such as names, dates and place; all are in English only. You can create your own class of smart tags with ActiveDocs 2002. You can also subscribe to a supplier of the tags, such as legal publisher LexisNexis, which has developed smart tags that link case names to entire case records.

Another feature we use quite often is Track Changes: as versions of a document travel back and forth amongst collaborators, we can see what has been added or deleted. This can at times result in a horrid mess, with the deleted characters and newly added characters appearing in a multi coloured jumble. Thankfully, this has been tidied up in the latest incarnation, with the inserted words highlighted in situ and the deleted characters appearing in a box in the margin.

Word has always handled graphics reasonably well via the Draw button bar and in XP not a great deal has changed, although there are two extra buttons to play with. There is now a Vertical Text Box function, and you can insert diagrams such as organisational charts, Venn diagrams, and pyramid diagrams, among others.

Word 2002 is a solid word processor with a few nice features that make upgrading attractive to some, but not overly compelling to others.

Excel 2002
For those familiar with previous versions of Excel, the interface holds few surprises. We found importing relatively complex Excel 2000 worksheets was trouble free.

Many of Excel 2000’s shortcomings have been addressed in this latest version.

For example, if like me you need to search for an item amongst multiple sheets, and have forgotten in which sheet the relevant item resides, the past you had to search each sheet individually. Now it’s a simple matter of selecting to search over the entire workbook, rather than individual sheets.

Inputting complex formulas can sometimes result in logic errors, rather than simple odd numbers of brackets. It can be a real pain trying to work out where your formula went wrong, but with the Evaluate Formula option you can step through the formula and find out at which step it goes astray. In a similar vein, the Watch Window allows you to select various results cells and keep an eye on their contents as you change values elsewhere in the sheet.

The AutoSum button on the tool bar has now developed multiple personalities, and in addition to the sum it also can calculate average, count, max and min through a drop-down menu. Web integration is certainly improved: creating Web Queries is very simple. If you need to keep your online Web-based price list up to date, for instance, Excel has an Auto Republish option that automatically updates the Web page each time you save the relevant sheet.

We have heard rumours that some have found Excel 2002 to be unstable but during our testing under Windows XP and Windows 2000 we did not experience a single glitch.

We found Excel to be more robust and feature-rich than StarOffice Calc and to be blunt, most of the time Excel was easier to use, and that’s discounting any previous familiarity with the product.

PowerPoint 2002
Our PowerPoint 2000 presentation imported and executed without a hitch under PowerPoint 2002. The interface itself is consistent with the previous version although there are slight changes.

Of course the all-pervasive Task Pane is present in PowerPoint 2002, and to be honest we actually found it more useful than the Word and Excel renditions. We particularly liked the quick and easy access to design templates, colour schemes, transitions, and animations through the Task Pane.

There is a good collection of slide transitions; around 17 more than the previous version. There are also many more preset animations than the previous version and they are much more flexible. The range includes custom motion paths that can simply be a scribble across the screen for the object to follow.

On a large display, the text rendering of the 2000 version was at times quite coarse and unprofessional looking. The 2002 version now includes anti-aliased text, which looks a good deal more refined. The application can be set up for dual display, where the presenter has one view of the presentation, say with speaker notes attached, and the audience has the normal slide view.

Other small additions that nevertheless are a very welcome addition include the ability to select multiple objects at once with a simple control-click, or the inclusion of grid lines and snap to grid to simplify object alignment. While on the subject of objects, how about the ability to rotate an object by simply clicking on it and grabbing the rotation handle?

Overall PowerPoint 2002 will appeal to the power presenter who needs the additional features that PowerPoint boasts above StarÃ,­Office Impress.

Product:	Microsoft Office XP Professional
Price:	AU$1288 retail (AU$749 upgrade, AU$366 educational), volume licensing available.
Vendor:	Microsoft
Phone:	13 20 58
Web:	www.microsoft.com.au
Interoperability:	½ Experienced no problems importing Office 2000 files. Restricted to Windows platforms.
Futureproofing:	Feature-rich office suite, so much so that most users will only utilise a small proportion of its features. Industry standard office suite for the foreseeable future.
ROI:	Expensive compared to StarOffice.
Service:	½ Free installation support, $50 per issue subsequently, 8am-8pm Mon-Fri. 24-hour support and service contracts available.
Rating:
System requirements:	133MHz Pentium or higher; 24MB RAM (Win 98), 32MB (Win Me or NT), or 64MB (Win 2K), with 8MB for each application when running; 245MB hard disk space.
Operating systems supported:	Windows 98, 98 SE, 2000, Me, NT 4.0 with SP 6.
Applications included:	Word 2002, Excel 2002, PowerPoint 2002, Access 2002, Outlook 2002.

Sun StarOffice v6.0

StarOffice is a collection of four main applications: Write (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation) and Draw (graphics). StarOffice version 5.2 was free, but Sun has decided to charge for the latest edition, version 6.0. Admittedly the cost is modest, particularly when compared to MS Office. We should note that StarOffice is still free to educational institutions, although they must pay the cost of the media and shipping.

Installation is quite painless and very quick, with the default installation consuming 236.2MB and the minimum installation 142.5MB.

All the applications boast an XML file format, which should allow any editor that supports XML to read and edit StarOffice files.

In general the overall interface is quite simple to use and navigate; it really does not look all that different from Office at first glance. Write for example does not look terribly different to Word.

StarOffice Write
When we attempted to import MS Word 2000 files to StarOffice straight out of the box, the results were less than stellar. The most disturbing problems were the insertion of the incorrect photos in the document; StarOffice would play an electronic version of “52-pickup” with the images and shuffle them around. It also completely bollixed up the insertion of our charts, again replacing them with randomly selected photos. Thankfully with the installation of Product Update 2 from Sun, these two problems vanished.

Amongst the other niggles the one we found most annoying was that Star Office’s character and line spacing was not quite the same as MS Office; at times the imported text occupied more space—a single line in Word would become a line and a bit in Star Office, which would at times result in a drastic change in a document’s layout.

OK, importing may offer some hurdles, but what about creating a complex document from scratch? We are happy to say this was not a problem, and other than some minor relearning due to interface differences between Write and Word, it was very straightforward.

We were able to create our documents complete with table of contents, numerous styles, photo, table, and chart insertions, and headers and footers without any problems. It’s worth mentioning that unlike Word, the headers and footers can be edited directly like any other chunk of text (although Word’s double click selection is a very minor inconvenience).

Office politics Introduction 1. Microsoft Office XP 2. Sun StarOffice v6.0 About RMIT

One of the features of Word that I have found very useful in the past is the auto correction and auto completion of words. Write not only includes the former, but has taken word completion to new heights. As a test, I typed in the word “somnambulist” (a sleep walker) into a sentence and then started a similar sentence that included the word. After I had typed it the first time, Write remembered the word, and suggested the auto-completion after typing just “som” the second time.

Creating tables is quite simple and Write provides tools to format cell widths, split and merge cells, and insert and delete rows or columns. Write can also perform a sum on a column of numbers.

Write can track changes in documents, but it uses the same representation as the previous version of Word, so the resulting text can look a tad messy.

In essence, Write is a powerful tool and will satisfy the needs of most, although weaning yourself off the Word way and onto the Write way of doing things can be a little tedious.

StarOffice Draw
Write has an embedded Drawing tool in a similar vein to Word. While it does not feature the ready made organisational charts, it includes more shape and curved line functions than Word, and other features such as call-out boxes and animated text, which is simply text that scrolls from right to left.

However, StarOffice also has a separate Draw package bundled that provides a far more expanded set of drawing features, including 3D solids whose 3D effects can be edited and manipulated. It’s a great addition and provides much more scope for drawings in the suite than Microsoft offers, although do not expect too much from the application, as its abilities are very modest when compared to dedicated graphics packages like Corel Draw.

StarOffice Calc
The interface of Calc is much the same as Write, and as a result does not immediately appear much different to Excel. Calc is less adept at importing Excel files than Write is at importing Word files. Any tables and their formulas and formatting transferred over surprisingly well, near enough identical to the original, but Calc tends to drop the ball when importing charts. That’s not to say the chart itself is wrong—the bar charts we imported were correct. Calc tends to pick large, easy to read, and user friendly fonts, apparently ignoring the Excel chart’s font sizes. This is fine for a simple chart with half a dozen or so in each series, however when you import a chart with say 20-odd items in the series (which in our opinion is not a terribly complex chart), Calc uses the same large fonts and thus renders the axis labels unreadable and totally useless. To make matters worse, fiddling with the font sizes is not as easy as it should be, because it also changes the scale of the chart as well.

In terms of general spreadsheet tasks, Calc is very good and with some exceptions is a great day-to-day replacement for Excel. Although while Calc appears to have all the features most of us need to use, its execution at times is anything but smooth and it tends to frustrate. For example we created a chart of the performance of 22 inkjet printers for the test exercise. To do this in Excel is a doddle: highlight the data and press F11. Bingo, a full page chart with sensible font size for the axis labels. We must admit even Office becomes bamboozled at times with more complex noncontiguous selections, but for the most part it gets it right. With Calc, selecting the data and then using the chart wizard to insert a chart results in a mis-sized chart that uses rather silly font sizes. It requires an inordinate amount of tweaking to get the chart anywhere near just right.

There are some notable omissions in Calc; for example, it lacks the collaborative features of Excel. While Calc can save files to the Web in HTML, the resultant file is not dynamic like Excel’s and is not interactive (Excel allows colleagues to edit the file online).

Formulas are simple in Calc as they are plain English statements, and the Data Acquisition tool will happily grab data from SQL databases and other spreadsheets. Another quite powerful tool is the Stylist formatting tool, that lets the user modify cells or entire worksheet styles in terms of the font, font style, size, and paragraph, although it could be a little more intuitive in its operation.

Calc supports what-if scenarios with the Scenario tool, allowing the user to explore the effects of different scenarios in multiple tables, much the same as Excel.

Calc is a great tool for basic spreadsheet applications, as long as your charts do not become too complex, however Excel is a more powerful, and in many ways more refined, product.

StarOffice Impress
Impress made quite a good attempt at importing our PowerPoint 2000 presentation. True, some of the transitions were not quite what we expected, but to be fair the presentation ran without a hitch.

The interface is clean and not difficult to navigate. There are five basic slide views, Drawing View (full-screen slide only), Outline View (much like PowerPoint outline), Slide View (multiple slide sorting view), Notes View, and Handout View. The left-hand toolbar has a similar array of drawing tools to Write as well as Arrange, Alignment, Effects, 3D Controller, and Insert tools. The latter simplifies the insertion of charts, formulae, OLE objects, plug-ins, applets, files, graphics, sound, and video.

Using the wizard to create a new presentation could not be simpler, and the range of templates is quite impressive, as are the 70-odd transition effects in the package.

Rearranging the order of your slides is as easy as dragging and dropping. Once a presentation is completed, it can be saved to your Web site in HTML format.

Overall, Impress is not as powerful as PowerPoint, but it’s still an impressive package that is easy to drive and can create spiffy presentations. Product Price Vendor Phone Web Interoperability Ã...- Futureproofing Ã...- ROI Ã...- Service Rating HHHH System requirements Operating systems supported Applications included

Product:	Sun StarOffice v6.0
Price:	AU$$192.50 retail (educational users only pay for materials and postage), volume licensing available.
Vendor:	Sun Microsystems
Phone:	1800 628 193
Web:	www.sun.com.au
Interoperability:	½ Experienced mostly minor problems importing Office 2000 files once Upgrade Patch 2 was installed. Available across a broad range of operating systems and hardware platforms.
Futureproofing:	½ Solid array of features in this office suite and although not as powerful as MS Office; has scope for all but the high-end power users.
ROI:	½ Very reasonably priced office suite, virtuÃ,­ally free for educational customers.
Service:	Web-based support and training, one free phone support incident for 60 days after purchase; per-incident fees subsequently.
Rating:
System requirements:	Pentium or SPARC processor, 64MB (Windows, Linux & Solaris/Intel platform) or 128MB (Solaris/SPARC platform), 250MB hard disk space, 800 x 600 x 256 colours or higher resolution.
Operating systems supported:	Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP. Solaris 7 (Solaris 8 is recommended). Linux Kernel V 2.2.13 or higher & glibc2 V2.1.3 or higher.
Applications included:	Write, Calc, Draw & Impress.

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About RMIT Test Labs

RMIT IT Test Labs is an independent testing institution based in Melbourne, Victoria, performing IT product testing for clients such as IBM, Coles-Myer, and a wide variety of government bodies. In the Labs’ testing for Technology & Business, they are in direct contact with the clients supplying products. Their findings are their own—only the specifications of the products to be tested are provided by the magazine. For more information on RMIT, please contact the Lab Manager, Steven Turvey.

Office politics Introduction 1. Microsoft Office XP 2. Sun StarOffice v6.0 About RMIT

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