Sun's coming out with a desktop with StarOffice on it. Would this be a good alternative to Intel running MS Office? Is there any chance that any hardware vendors will choose to bundle OpenOffice with their PCs?

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Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to try Sun's new desktop yet. I understand it will be fully available in December 2003. However, OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are excellent alternatives to Microsoft Office, regardless of the platform. If you're interested in planning a transition, see my article on the topics to consider and manage as you switch an organization over. I would recommend that you download OpenOffice.org 1.1 and get a book for it, and play with it for a few hours to see how it works. Then when Sun's new desktop is available, or prior to that if you can get access to a prerelease version, then see if you like the desktop.

The key thing is that StarOffice and OpenOffice.org run well on Windows, Solaris and Linux, and the decision whether to go with one of those office suites can be made independently of the decision to switch desktop operating systems.

More information can be found here.

This was first published in October 2003

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