StarOffice / OpenOffice for Not Yet Techies

StarOffice / OpenOffice is a suite of business and office related tools that provides a low or no cost alternative to Microsoft's Office. StarOffice / OpenOffice are largely the same.

StarOffice is available from Sun Microsystems and costs $75. OpenOffice is available from openoffice.org and is a free download.

StarOffice / OpenOffice are pretty much the same, except of course for the price -- and it does include Base, a database management system that connects with data sources. Unlike Access, Visual FoxPro or other such database programs such as the one I learned on, Paradox, Base does not create its own databases. Presumably you use Base to give you access to other databases in other programs, either on your own PC, in a company or over the Internet.

Other StarOffice / OpenOffice are obviously alternate versions of MS Office programs:

Writer - word processor
Calc -- spreadsheets
Impress -- presentations
Draw -- graphics, which doesn't have a MS Office equivalent

StarOffice / OpenOffice do not have an Outlook equivalent for email and contact management. Personally, since Outlook is the main distributor of viruses across the Internet, I hope you use another program for email anyway (personally, I keep mine all web-based now but this may not be practical for businesses). There are many other personal information manager.

Also, I see nothing equivalent to FrontPage, but there are many web site editors, many of them free.

Sun Microsystems has made some changes to create it.

StarOffice / OpenOffice can import and export Microsoft file formats, so there is no need to get MS Office just because you or your business must deal with Word .doc files etc.

Even if you want or need a full database program with Access file formatting, it's a lot cheaper to obtain StarOffice / OpenOffice and buy Access as a standalone program.

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