OpenOffice / StarOffice - any difference?

[OverWorked]

I want to encourage pupils to use OpenOffice at home, but first I need to decide whether to offer OpenOffice or StarOffice.

Is there any real difference? I've read that StarOffice is free to education, but then OpenOffice is free to everyone. StarOffice may come with better support. Anything else?

Thanks.

[Ric_]

IIRC StarOffice adds some additional fonts to make it a more direct replacement for MS Office (the fonts help the rendering of Office docs). Other than that I don't think that there is much difference.

[CyberNerd]

Q:
What are the differences between StarOffice 8 software and the OpenOffice.org 2.0?
A:
StarOffice 8 software is a commercial product built on OpenOffice.org’s open source code to provide the best value, multi-platform Microsoft compatible office suite aimed at organizations and consumers. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the leading open-source project aimed at users of free software, independent developers and the open source community. StarOffice includes licensed-in, third-party technology such as:

* Spellchecker and thesaurus
* Mail Merge Wizard does not have the ability to send mail merge documents as emails.
* Select fonts including Windows metrically equivalent fonts and Asian language fonts
* Select filters, including Asian word processor filters
* Integration of additional templates and extensive clipart gallery
* Migration Tools and Macro Migration Wizard. The converted macros does not run in OpenOffice.org
* Sun Java System Configuration Manager for Solaris, Linux and Windows In addition to product differences, StarOffice offers:
o Updates/upgrades on CD
o Sun installation and user documentation
o 24x7 Web based support for enterprises and consumers
o Help desk support
o Warranties and indemnification guarantee Training
o Professional services for migration and deployment

For a detailed comparison, please see. For more information on components and services available for the OpenOffice.org product, visit the OpenOffice.org Web site.

There have been some recent updates to openoffice so I'm not sure how much extra they put into openoffice yet?

[OverWorked]

Thanks.

I published a CD of free software including OpenOffice for our students a few months ago, but no one's shown any interest, apart from a science teacher. (I'm fed up with kids bringing in homework from MS Works).

I want to push the CD again. I just thought this would be a good opportunity to change to StarOffice.

Now that OpenOffice is at v2.1, it may be a better choice - I'll have a look.

[SimpleSi]

AFIAK the differences are little and more due to internal Sun business ideas at any one moment in time.

I used to use StarOffice 6 in pref to OpenOffice 1.0 in the early days because it looked more polished but OpenOffice 2.x is polished enough for me

regards

Simon