To be sure, there are lower-cost alternatives. WordPerfect Office is probably the best-known competitor, but even this product has a "street price" of about $330. That’s a lot of money for a private individual who wants to write a few letters, calculate taxes, and maybe keep a telephone list. Luckily, there are still other competitors available. Some of them have the capability of Microsoft’s and WordPerfect’s office suites and have a much lower price tag. Much, much lower. In fact, my favorite one is free. That’s right, zero. Nada. Zip. However, it won’t be available much longer.

My favorite free personal productivity suite is StarOffice, available from Sun Microsystems, the same people who produce the heavy-duty UNIX systems. In fact, StarOffice is available on Sun Microsystem’s Solaris operating system as well as other versions for Microsoft Windows and for Linux. Two years ago, in the 27 December 1999 edition of this newsletter, I wrote about the then-current version of StarOffice:

You can still read my full review of StarOffice at: www.ancestry.com/library/view/columns/eastman/36.asp

Little has changed since I wrote those words. StarOffice has been updated, and version 6.0 became available in a beta test version about two months ago. The Version 6.0 beta release is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris. I downloaded StarOffice 6.0 beta some time ago and use it daily on my Linux system. The Windows version is almost identical to the Linux version.

Is this free software suite just as good as Microsoft Office? Well, the answer will vary from one user to another. My personal opinion is that StarOffice is "almost as good as Microsoft Office." It probably has 95 percent of the functionality of Microsoft’s product, and the remaining 5 percent is stuff that I don’t normally use. I can forego that 5 percent if I can keep $479 in my pocket! Also, StarOffice has some features not found in Microsoft Office, including a rather good drawing program.

However, version 6.0 beta is about to disappear from Sun’s download site. The beta version was made available to the public so that Sun could obtain feedback from users as to software design issues or possible bugs. While I haven’t encountered any bugs in my usage, Sun apparently has received all the information they seek. "We've got all the feedback we can handle here," spokesman Russ Castronovo said. "We are at saturation point. I think we've satisfied the requirements of the program."

Version 6.0 beta will probably disappear from Sun’s download site on 1 January 2002. It may re-appear later in the year as a commercial program. The current version 5.2 production release will continue to be available for some time after 1 January, however. You can obtain version 5.2 at: www.sun.com/staroffice/;$sessionid$5202RQXIZQ5CBAMTA1LU4GQ

Version 6.0 beta adds a lot of new features and has a much better user interface than version 5.2, in my opinion. If you would like to obtain version 6.0 beta of this excellent free personal productivity suite, I suggest you do so now before it disappears. Go to: www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.0beta/index.html;$sessionid$2GEQGNEBZ3OMDAMTA1FU5YQ

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