“Sun Microsystems has released a beta version of StarOffice 9, the first edition of its office suite to natively support the Mac. StarOffice includes presentation, spreadsheet and word processing software, as well as programs for drawing, databases and HTML editing,” MacNN reports.
“The Mac version of StarOffice runs on Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and requires 500MB of hard drive space along with a 1024×768 display. The download is free, but the beta is currently set to expire on August 17th. The final version of v9 is due to be available in the fall,” MacNN reports.
Full article, with download link, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chuckles the Microsoft CEO” for the heads up.]
No reason left to buy anything else than a Mac… Bye, bye, M$… None will regret you…
what will the final version cost?
Sweeet!
@fatal
Less than M$ Office!
It’s been $69.95 for download, volume discounts for business.
Or, you could wait for the OpenOffice Mac port to catch up.
You can already get a free version of StarOffice native for Mac OS X. It is called NeoOffice and it works great.
Seems to be Intel only, yet another reason I should upgrade my 3 year old ibook.
Why wouldn’t you just get iWork suite?
NeoOffice is good enough for me now, and the beta version of Open Office 3.0 for mac looks very promising for the future. With these great free office suites for mac, I don’t see the appeal of a beta of the $70 StarOffice.
Altho my work computer uses MS Office 2008 (old habits die hard, and in any case, no independent developer makes an integrated mail/contacts/calendaring program as good as Entourage), I put NeoOffice on those Macs that only occasionally need to open or create Word or Excel files. It serves its purpose nicely, and heck, it was able to open the new XML format files before any Microsoft Mac product could.
For what it is worth, I also have the iWork suite. I couldn’t live without Keynote, and for presentation docs, I prefer Pages to Word, I don’t get much use out of Numbers – Excel has been on my computers since 1986.
Is it compatible with MS files, and vice-versa?
Sorry… I should have said, “Is it fully compatible with MS files, and vice versa?”
Ugh, I gotta register an account to download and try it out. No thanks.
I mean, if you want people to try your software, why wouldn’t you make it as convenient and unobtrusive an experience as possible?
Anyone else not downloading this because you don’t feel like registering an account on Sun’s website?
I’ve been using neooffice for years now and although it is nice to have because of its file compatibility, the interface is wanting intuitive. I was excited for OO 3.0 in Aqua, but it isn’t even as good as Neooffice. Both suites need major performance enhancements. I think Star Office has much better polish on the Windows version and it will be interesting to see how it fares on the Mac. I’ll be downloading for sure.
OpenOffice works just fine, thank you.
@TheConfused1 – same question can be asked about MS Office. Does 2008 work with 2003? Are 2004 files compatible with 2003?
Peace.
For my money you can’t beat Mariner Write and Mariner Calc. Inexpensive and lightning fast (both programs launch and open large docs in well under 3 seconds on a 2GHz Macbook). As far as compatibility goes I haven’t had an Excel file that wouldn’t open correctly in Calc yet (out of about 35 or so) but I am not a finance guy using complex equations so I can’t speak to that. On the Write side I have only had one document that wouldn’t open correctly in Mariner Write (out of about 200) and I think that was because a colleague sent me the file filled with stuff he had copied from various web pages directly into Word for Mac and probably pasted it as HTML text. The doc was basically a web page copied into and rendered by MonstrosityWord. And occasionally I’ve gotten some formatting errors in Write when opening a Word file but no worse than trying to open a file from an earlier version of MSW but nothing that couldn’t be easily and quickly fixed.
Maybe I’m just lucky but the only MS product that ever gets opened on my Macs now is PowerPoint and that is because I have a few clients who insist in giving me files in that format to convert for video (and Keynote will not open PPT files). I’m not a big fan of iWork. I prefer Mariner’s interfaces. Just as sparse and intuitive but a little more so in my book. I also don’t do much word processing as is the case with most people. I do page layout and design for print (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.), web page design (Dreamweaver, etc.), and an incredible amount of writing (various text editors, and writing tools such as Montage & Avenir – writers do NOT use MSWord or word processors unless they like to waste their time formatting instead of writing).
No documents actually get created using a MS product anywhere in my production studios. And no one is allowed to do so. RTF (rich text format) is more than snazzy enough for just about anything text based most people need to create and deliver. They just don’t realize it…
PS: I have also tried NeoOffice, OO and some of the other open source products (including Celtx – an open source Screenplay writing app). They all seemed to suffer from bugs and quirks (maybe not deadly but certainly annoying) as well as being as slow if not slower than the MS (or other brand) product I was attempting to replace. And I mean SLOOOOOOWWWWW! So, no thanks.
Pretty nice, although the interface looks very “90’s.” But I guess this is trying to replicate MS Office, so that should be expected.
I like the separate object-based Drawing module. That will be useful, even if I use iWork for word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation. Plus there’s a database module.
Why not just get the iWork suite, which “just works” and is a fairly mature suite of applications, and opens and saves in M$ formats – if required.