StarOffice will no longer be free.

CougTek

Serial computer killer
Joined
Jan 21, 2002
Messages
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Québec, Québec
Hi,

According to this article, Sun plans to charge between 50$ to 100$ to people who'll want to download the next version of Star Office. While I would be willing to pay for Star Office rather than paying for Microsoft's bloated MS Office, I think it will be a huge blow for the popularity of this office suite. It better be a lot superior than version 5.2 currently is if Sun wants to convince people to buy it.

I know it cost a lot to develop and maintain a complex software like an Office suite, but IMO, Sun would have more success to sell their new StarOffice version if they would ask something around 20U$ rather than a steep 50$. If they dare to ask 100$ for SO, they'll simply kill it. They are simply not in a position to ask that much for StarOffice considering that it's not very widely used compared to MS Office.
 

Adcadet

Storage Freak
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Jan 14, 2002
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ug! Bad news indeed.

I totally agree with you, Coug, on pricing - if it's good, I'd pay $20 for it. If it's really good (as in an MS Office replacement) I might pay $50. But it would have to come pre-loaded on a nice 1200JB for me to pay $100 for it!

Considering what 5.2 was like, it looks like I'll be sticking with AbiWord and KWord for my Linux word processing duties.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I've found it's pathetically easy to get SmartSuite licenses for Windows boxes for next to nothing. Too bad. I have installed Star Office on cutomer's machines in the past. To be honest, it wasn't a very popular choice.
 

Tea

Storage? I am Storage!
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The price of SmartSuite is just incredible. Roughly between 10% and 5% of the Microsoft product. In software terms, that's the bargain of the century.

And you get Organiser (which I'm told is good) and FastSite, which isn't bad if you like that sort of thing, and ScreenCam too.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Find a company that buys lots of IBM equipment; IBM gives away a copy of smartsuite with just about everything they sell. Almost no "real business" uses smartsuite, so those licenses are usually up for grabs.

I've gotten new copies of smartsuite for free, and I don't think I've paid more than $15 for a copy.
 

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
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Like Mercutio said. I retail it with systems for AU $40, and I make more from a $40 SmartSuite than I do from a $420 MS Office. Not more percentage, more actual count-em dollars. Now figure my buy price. :-?
 
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