Mac Users Can Now Use Staroffice Version 9
The latest version of the StarOffice productivity suite from Sun Microsystems is now supported on the Mac. StarOffice 9 is the first version with native support for Mac systems, aiming to be a low cost alternative to the popular Microsoft Office.
Like the OpenOffice.org 3.0 which was released sometime back, StarOffice 9 is an open source as well, sharing the same code with the OpenOffice.org.
With this release, Sun Microsystems also added support to read Open XML files which was introduced by Microsoft in Office 2007, but options to edit existing XML files or to save new XML files are missing.
According to Iyer Venkatesan, the Product Manager for StarOffice, StarOffice may add full Open XML support in the future if the market demands it. Beside that, it also has support for other file formats like Open Document Format (PDF) which can be read and edited as well.
The software cost $35 for individuals and $25 for each user inside a business.