Q: I have Office 2000 replaced (Attempts to government agency I work for (900 workstations, 27 servers) to convince them to use Linux instead of MS OSs . I tried importing a few xls files and kspread a few strange things happened (Nothing that big could not be established in a few seconds, but nevertheless stuff. Is there anything that fits my needs, can someone please point me in the right direction.
OH, as an aside, can someone tell me as the replacement for Excel “VLOOKUP” in KSpread? Thanks a lot.
Re:<<
<< I agree, you simply can't find a better product than Outlook to disseminate Internet worms and viruses. No other product can single-handedly cost businesses an estimated billions of dollars in one day without any user intervention. i/expressions/rolleye.gif >>
ROFL
n0c, what I think guy meant by "compatible" was more like "industry standard" as opposed to "plays well with others." 
Lethal >>
Ahh, so compatible with whoever is using Office. So compatibility is basically compatible with some users, not necessarily hardware or operating system. Gotcha. Thats stupid.
Re:<< I agree, you simply can't find a better product than Outlook to disseminate Internet worms and viruses. No other product can single-handedly cost businesses an estimated billions of dollars in one day without any user intervention. i/expressions/rolleye.gif >>
ROFL
n0c, what I think guy meant by "compatible" was more like "industry standard" as opposed to "plays well with others."
Lethal
Re:I have been using Star Office 6.0 beta for a couple of months. My usage is simple. But I have been able to open ms spreadsheets and
word documents without any problem.. I have also saved doc generated with star as ms word docs. with no apparent difficulties.
Re:I agree, you simply can't find a better product than Outlook to disseminate Internet worms and viruses. No other product can single-handedly cost businesses an estimated billions of dollars in one day without any user intervention. i/expressions/rolleye.gif
Re:<< MS Office is the best, Star Office is ok, but you're asking people to go from the best to something else, they won't like it. They are a lot of annoying things about MS Office, and it's very expensive. >>
Those reasons right there tell me its not the best, but Ill continue 
<< But the benefits of professional support (MS is among the best), >>
Ok, thats not too bad, but I have no faith in tech support
<< compatibility, >>
Actually its very *INCOMPATIBLE*. It runs on 2 platformsand nothing else. So unless you own a Windows or Macintosh machine you cannot use it. Plus the formats are proprietary which makes compatibility a bitch for anyone trying to be compatible with these formats.
<< and wide support, >>
Is this support different than the one you mentioned previously?
<< you just can't find a better product. >>
I havent found a good replacement yet, but I havent been looking. I will definitely be trying staroffice out when I get the chance.
Re:MS Office is the best, Star Office is ok, but you're asking people to go from the best to something else, they won't like it. They are a lot of annoying things about MS Office, and it's very expensive. But the benefits of professional support (MS is among the best), compatibility, and wide support, you just can't find a better product.
Re:<< Wasnt there news that Sun dropped Linux support for Star Office? Hopefully thats after 6.0… >>
No, the recent announcement is that they will begin officially charging for StarOffice 6.0.
This isn't really a revelation or new strategy, because a retail packaged SO 5.2 has been on sale for a long time now. It's akin to what Sun does w/ Forte Community Edition (free download), and the commercial Forte line.
The only way businesses and government will ever adopt StarOffice is if it has adequate functionality, is a a better value than M$ Office, and actually includes paid support. Obviously, the free download wasn't fulfilling the last requirement.
The functionality is pretty much there, although SO 6.0 release is anticipated by many. The value proposition is there, but also a tougher nut to crack. Although there's no doubt Sun can sell SO for less than Office, an Office OEM license bundled w/ a PC is pretty cheap as well (about $75 cost to the consumer). Of course, M$ Office import filters are also crucial, but as Workin' said, it's about as good as it gets.
The good news is that Office is Microsoft's most profitable franchise (more so than Winblows), and so even if Sun doesn't make money on SO, they could severely crimp Microsoft's Office revenue if SO adoption occurs. Obviously, Microsoft won't be hurting w/ $38 billion in the bank, but any threat to their business is healthy competition.
Let's face it, full binary compatibility will never happen (Office is a de facto monopoly), but if businesses and organizations adopted SO, it would cease to be relevant once M$ Office is no longer the native data format.
Re:If you are looking for *perfect* file compatibility w/Office, you will never find it. StarOffice is about as close as you can get, but in my opinion it's not close enough – unless all your documents are extremely simple. But if you are using vlookup then they probably aren't that simple… and if you have any embedded objects? Fuhgetaboutit, you're hosed.
Re:Wasnt there news that Sun dropped Linux support for Star Office? Hopefully thats after 6.0…
Re:WordPerfect for Linux is pretty much a dead product (it never sold).
Sun StarOffice 6.0 seems to be the most likely competitor to the Office franchise/monopoly. It should be released any month now.
Re:Have you looked at OpenOffice (think Sun still calls their version StarOffice) or WordPerfect Suite?
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