SUN shines over its StarOffice suite

KUALA LUMPUR, June 28 (MaxisNet) - The StarOffice 5.2, a powerful, full-featured, multi-platform office productivity suite, is now being featured by Sun Microsystems, Inc., calling it a high quality no-cost office productivity software that aims to attract users of Solaris Operating Environment, Linux and Microsoft Windows.

It is available immediately and offers over 200 new and enhanced features, which can be downloaded at http://www.sun.com/staroffice in 11 languages. The 5.2's features are designed to simplify usage. According to a statement, they include improved product reliability, stability, performance, and more robust Microsoft Office import and export filters.

It also allows reduced file sizes, full online help and written documentation, a complete database engine on all major platforms, graphics power enhancements, and introduction of XML as a file format.

Located in a convenient single desktop environment, office productivity tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawing, web-publishing, email, scheduling and database, enable access to every application within the desktop, greatly increasing efficiency.

"With more than 69,000 preview downloads, the StarOffice 5.2 Suite includes the features users are demanding, packed into a no-cost, cross-platform, Microsoft Office interoperable suite that essentially lowers total cost of ownership," said Govinathan Pillai, managing director of Sun Microsystems Malaysia.

Sun is marketing its StarOffice software to small businesses, educational institutions, government and select enterprises, where they can benefit from a no-cost, feature-rich, cross-platform office productivity solution. Currently, StarOffice software can be found in thousands of educational institutions worldwide.

Sun plans to extend the reach of StarOffice by making its source code available to the open source community.

How to use?

To use, a StarOffice software user can describe his/her problem in a chat box and select from a list of customer-rated experts who will submit bids to resolve the problem. StarOffice software users only pay for support sessions which fully meet their expectations. (http://www.sun.com/supportforum/staroffice).

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