Advertisement
Promo

Office applications Toolkit

Alternatives to Microsoft Office

Bonnie Cha CNET

Published: 23 Jun 2004

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment

It's no secret that Microsoft Office dominates the productivity suite market, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to go. Corel and Sun Microsystems offer two alternatives that provide a core stable of programs at a fraction of the price of Microsoft's package.

Corel's WordPerfect Office 12 sports interface improvements and one-click PDF, HTML, and XML publishing. Sun's StarOffice 7.0 is a lesser-known name, but it provides all the basic productivity tools and throws in a couple of extras, such as a drawing program. Of course, there are trade-offs. These two suites don't come with email clients, and they're not the best at converting Microsoft Office files.

So which to choose? Budget, work habits and necessity will all come into play, but to help get you started, we've created a comparison chart of what the Standard edition of each office suite has to offer out of the box. Read on to see which one is best suited for you.

If you want to spend the absolute minimum -- that is, nothing -- on your productivity software, check out ZDNet's downloads channel, where you'll find OpenOffice.org (the open source version of StarOffice) and EasyOffice.

Office suite comparison

Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition


WordPerfect Office 12


StarOffice 7.0



Price (inc. VAT)
£326.49 £276.13 £44.99
OS support
Windows Windows Windows, Linux, Solaris
Features
Word processor Word WordPerfect Writer
Spreadsheet Excel Quattro Pro Calc
Presentations PowerPoint Presentations Impress
Email Outlook n/a n/a
Database n/a n/a Base (Adabas D)
Drawing n/a n/a Draw
Support plans
Phone 2 free incidents (toll call); £45 per incident thereafter (toll free); £150 for 5-incident pack £15 per incident (toll free); 10 incidents for £90; 15 incidents for £150; pay-as-you-go, £1.50 a minute 60 days of free support; $25 (~£14) per phone session thereafter
Email 2 free incidents; £29 per incident thereafter unlimited free email enquiries 60 days of free support; $20 (~£11) per email session thereafter

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment
Compare The Products Product Date Editors'
Rating
Readers'
Rating
Compare The Products Product Date Editors'
Rating
Readers'
Rating

Did you find this article useful?
51 out of 94 people found this useful


Video icon

Video

Discussions

182706 182706

translation

Saturday 4 July 2009, 12:15 AM

1 comment
Moley Moley

More on Moblin

Friday 3 July 2009, 7:59 PM

4 comments
whbs whbs

Microsoft US-UK ripoff again!

Friday 3 July 2009, 7:54 PM

1 comment

Vista Upgrade Blog

PreSales Canabalize Retailers' Opening...

(My attempt at writing a tabloid headline.) A Very Interesting Microsoft event just occurred. Microsoft is offering at a deep discount and through direct retail sale their FUTURE... More

Post a comment

Windows 7 on a Read-only Flash Drive?

Considering that the price of a 4GB USB flash drive has been as low as 5 dollars on close-out specials, financially it wouldn't make sense UNLESS Microsoft decides to go into the Flash... More

Post a comment

Bizarre Windows 7 Downgrade/Upgrade Po...

Over at the ZDNet U.S. site, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has posted about what will apparently be a new low in bizarre downgrade/upgrade policies involving Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows... More

4 comments


Skip Sub Navigation Links to CNET Brand Links

Help

Become part of the ZDNet community.

Newsletters