Sun slashes price of StarOffice in half

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 17 Nov 2008 at 14:22

Sun has launched version 9 of StarOffice and cut the price of the software in half.

StarOffice is the corporate big brother of the entirely free OpenOffice, but comes bundled with the open-source email package Thunderbird and technical support, in a bid to win business customers.

Nevertheless, the single-user price of StarOffice has been dropped to $34.95 - half of what its predecessor was being sold for - suggesting the company is having trouble attracting subscribers with a near-identical free alternative a click or two away. Volume licensing deals now start from $25.

The StarOffice 9 suite naturally includes many of the features introduced in OpenOffice 3, including support for Mac OS X, an increase in the maximum number of columns in the spreadsheet app and a new Solver tool.

Sun says it's also able to offer StarOffice buyers access to enterprise tools that will help them with a migration from Microsoft Office.

"The StarOffice engineering teams and OpenOffice.org community have come together to produce a first-class product," claims Jim Parkinson, vice president of developer, tools and services at Sun Microsystems.

"With the new features in 9, businesses get an open standards-based, enterprise-class office productivity suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office but costs significantly less. With its ability to read MS Office Open XML files, support for MS Access 2007 .accdb files and improved VBA macro support, StarOffice 9 is a great option for companies looking to reduce their IT costs in these tough economic times."

StarOffice was quietly dropped from the Google Pack earlier this month, and has yet to make a return with the launch of the new version.

Click here to read our review of OpenOffice 3.