Tools Of The Trade: The Sun StarOffice 8

Microsoft's Office suite is used on an overwhelming majority of computers. Any company hoping to dent that market share will have to offer something quite exceptional.

Sun Microsystems is best known for its Unix-based computers rather than for desktop software. But the company is taking an aggressive approach to the market, with StarOffice selling for just over £60 online, compared with around £350 for Microsoft's package.

StarOffice also compares well in terms of features. Microsoft's Office Professional comes with a word processor, email client, presentations package, spreadsheet, DTP (desktop publishing) application and a database. StarOffice has a word processor, presentations software, a database, spreadsheet, drawing program and built-in support for PDF files.

Where the two packages differ markedly is in the operating systems they will work on. Microsoft Office runs on Windows, and there is a version for the Mac. StarOffice works on Sun's Solaris system, on both Sun's own and industry-standard processors. It is also compatible with Windows and Linux.

Sun is clearly hoping that it will win business from companies and individuals who want to move to Linux and open source. In fact, StarOffice is based on an open-source project known as OpenOffice, which is free; StarOffice adds support from Sun as well as versions for non-Linux platforms.

But StarOffice is also an interesting option for cost-conscious users of Windows computers. Sun has gone to some lengths to ensure compatibility with Microsoft Office documents, and the firm offers a compatibility wizard to help companies with complex macros (short cuts that users write into Microsoft Office documents to automate tasks) to move to StarOffice.

Opening a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file in StarOffice shows just how effective this work has been. Earlier versions of StarOffice struggled, especially with PowerPoint: even relatively simple files could cause problems. But the latest version seems to have fixed most of these problems.

For day-to-day office use, StarOffice has almost everything most people need. The weakest area, and one of Microsoft's strengths, is communications. Microsoft Office integrates well with the Outlook mail, calendar and contacts applications, as well as with MSN Messenger. Sun does offer instant messaging and email applications, but they are not part of the core StarOffice package, so users will have to look elsewhere.

Microsoft has also added some genuinely useful extra functions to its Office suite, especially for note taking and managing projects. Microsoft's interface is also somewhat slicker.

But these are not, in themselves, reasons to pick Microsoft Office over Star-Office. Sun's software has its own advanced features, including a facility that completes words as you type - which users may either love or hate - and support for the emerging OpenDocument format. As well as Sun, this is backed by IBM, Novell and Red Hat, and it provides switchers with at least a basic guarantee that if they want to move from StarOffice in the future, other applications will be able to read the files.

Pound for pound, StarOffice is great value. Some will undoubtedly need the extra features in Microsoft Office, but as both Microsoft and Sun offer trial packages, it is worth checking them out.

RATING: 4 out of 5.

PROS: great value, solid feature set.

CONS: interface less slick than Microsoft's.

PRICE: around £60 online.

CONTACT: www.sun.com