StarOffice 5.2 A Short Take on a Long Download And More

When I started this month's installment, I was all set to make the theme "What's wrong with Chrysler?" All set, that is, until StarOffice got in the way. What does StarOffice have to do with Chrysler? Nothing but more on that later. The bottom line is that, instead of a rant on Chrysler, a company that in the space of a year -- has gone from $8,000 employee bonuses to 26,000 laid-off employees, I'm going to focus on computer stuff. Word up. I might get to Chrysler yet. For a preview, a critical review of Chrysler's minivans, see www.edmunds.com/roadtests/longtermroadtests/2001/dodge/. If you want to send me your two cents on Chrysler, send me an e-mail at conslaw@aol.com . If you're just interested in fun stuff skip to the bottom of the page.

Housekeeping: More on Google and Cumulative Trauma Disorders.
In my last column, I raved about how Google is an amazing search engine. I use it for about 90% of my searches. Google is so fast that it really lends itself to stream-of-consciousness type searches. For example, below are several searches that I made on Google just to see how often the terms were associated. The number to the right of the boldfaced terms is the number of hits matching the words. (Google is simple in that it always uses "and" to search for the terms. You can require terms to be in order by enclosing them in quotes.)

George W goofy (2430)
goes into a bar joke (1460)
Pontiac Aztek ugly (207)
Autoworker bass boat (11) (see, not that many)

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: In my last column, I commented on my Carpal Tunnel Syndrome symptoms. Since that column, I found out that my main problem is not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but Cubital Tunnel Syndrome. Cubital Tunnel Syndrome is caused by a pinched nerve in the funny bone area of the elbow. It is apparently the second-most common repetitive stress injury of the arm. More on Cubital Tunnel Syndrome can be found at www.scoi.com/cubital.htm and www.sechrest.com/mmg/reflib/ctd/cubtun/cubtun.html. My doctor prescribed an elbow pad to wear during the day, a hard brace to wear at night, and anti-inflammatory medication. In about three weeks, I've noticed a marked improvement.

Star Office 5.2: A Free Alternative to Microsoft Office
Recently, Microsoft announced the latest upgrade to its Office productivity suite of applications, Office XP. The Microsoft P.R. department bragged about how the software is being released on time. www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/trends/0,7607,2689095,00.html. That's good, because it doesn't seem to be a huge upgrade over Office 2000, and Office 2000 wasn't a huge upgrade over office 97. I don't use half the features of Word 97. Nevertheless, Microsoft thinks 50 million users will upgrade to Office XP. We'll see.

I thought I'd take the release of Office XP to discuss free and low cost alternatives, with a focus on StarOffice. StarOffice, from Sun Microsystems, is an integrated suite of productivity applications designed to be compatible with, and to compete with, Microsoft Office. StarOffice is available for a free download www.sun.com/products/staroffice/get.html, or for a nominal sum on CD-ROM. (Officially, its $39.95 from Sun. A company named Completely Free Software (CFS) advertises their own version for $15.90. CFSs version is available at www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/trends/0,7607,2689095,00.html.) Since Microsoft Office goes for about $495 retail, you've got to wonder, what's the catch? I'm not sure. I can tell you that the product appears to be full featured, but the downloading process does nothing to enhance one's productivity.
I don't have the time or space to do a complete review of any office suite. A full review of StarOffice 5.2 can be found at www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/07/10/staroffice.5.2.idg/ . For comparisons, reviews of Microsoft Office 2000, Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.5 and Wordperfect Office 2000 can be found at www.zdnet.com/products/filter/guide/0,7267,6000442,00.html

Why StarOffice?
I originally decided to download the StarOffice software because my wife needed a full-featured word processor with native support for Spanish characters. For more than a decade, we'd been a Apple Macintosh household. The Mac has always had built-in support for international characters at the system level. We bought our first Windows machine last fall, when we found a too-good-to-pass-up deal on a Compaq Presario that Sears accidentally mis-priced in an ad. The Compaq, like most low-end computers, only came with Microsoft's low-end Works application. Works provides no foreign language support. It was also inconvenient not having a program that could read and write to Microsoft Word files. StarOffice advertises complete file compatibility with Microsoft Word. Compatibility with Microsoft Word is a very useful feature since Word has an overwhelming marketshare these days.

Originally, I expected that my needs would be met by WordPerfect. The Compaq came with a coupon that you could send in to buy Corel's WordPerfect Suite 2000, a full-featured productivity suite, for $10.00. I was somewhat familiar with WordPerfect. We'd been using WordPerfect for the Mac for 5 years as our back-up word processor, and its international support was good. So we sent in our $10.00, and the Corel CD-Rom arrived promptly. I installed the software with no problems, but Spanish characters were still only supported by entering character codes (a much more tedious process than alternate keystrokes). Not only did we receive the standard WordPerfect Office Suite, but we also received CorelDraw and CorelPaint as well as Ventura 8, a full-fledged desktop publishing application that used to be a legitimate competitor to Pagemaker.
For all practical purposes then, Corel was giving away virtually all its bread & butter software for $10.00. Sounds like a winning business strategy to me. Corel's cross promotion with Compaq has now apparently ended. I suspect that you can still score a good deal on the WordPerfect Suite if you look around.
Anyway, back to WordPerfect Suite. I really wanted to like the WordPerfect word processor but, to me, it's just not as friendly as Microsoft Word 97, the word processor that I use at work. Still, WordPerfect is good enough for anything I want to do, it's just that the version that I got for $10.00 doesn't have Spanish language support. Ive also had a few file conversion glitches with Microsoft Word documents. WordPerfect has an excellent reputation as a word processor for lawyers. It has automatic table of contents and table of authorities features that help for brief writing and long projects. It is probably also better at handling things like widows and orphans than Microsoft Word 97. I think every professional who works with words should have a back-up wordprocessor just in case your primary program can't do what you want to do or can't open the file that you want to open. WordPerfect fills this role excellently.

Now, Back to StarOffice!

Downloading StarOffice not for the Faint of Heart.
From the Sun website, it is clear that Star Office has extensive foreign language support separate versions are available for about a dozen languages. So, it was in hopes of Spanish support that I undertook the 78 megabyte download of the standard version of StarOffice for Windows. Before you can download the software, you have to register. The registration form asks for the standard information. After you fill out the form, you're free to download to your heart's content. I have a standard 56k modem and America Online is my ISP. With my phone line, on a good day, I get about a 40 kbit/sec connection. The first time I attempted to download the software, I let it download overnight from early in the evening. The end result: 76 megabytes downloaded. Close, but no cigar. My download software, RealDownload, free at www.real.com, tried repeatedly to pick up where it left off, but the authorization expired. RealDownload helps with downloading long files, but it is no panacea.
I re-registered and tried again. No joy. I tried again. Another overnight download, and finally success! I think I must have spent about 3 hours actually in front of the computer trying to get the software downloaded. Certainly, if you value your time, you should consider just ordering the CD-Rom. After about the first unsuccessful attempt, it wasn't about time or money with me. It was a contest: me against the machine. There was no way that I was going to stop before I downloaded that sucker.
When you install StarOffice, the 78 Mbyte file decompresses to take up over 200 Mbyte hard disk space. You don't have a lot of installation options, and those you do have aren't well described. Installing from the CD-Rom might be more versatile. Don't even bother downloading StarOffice unless you have a lot of disk space.

Trying out the StarOffice Word processor

Now, (finally) I can only give you my first impressions, but I've gotta tell ya, it seems like a good word processor and a really good free word processor. It has integrated predictive spell-checking, a feature that full-featured word processors have that the low-end software (like Microsoft Works) lack. Overall, the feel is a little bit more like Microsoft Word than WordPerfect, but it has features of the two. I haven't touched any of the other applications or read any of the documentation. I can't think of anything that it can't do except (as far as I can tell) support Spanish characters. I downloaded the English version, hoping that it supported Spanish characters. As far as I can tell, it doesn't. There is also a Spanish version available for downloading. StarOffice seems to read Microsoft Word files just fine. I haven't uncovered any compatibility problems. Performance is fine on my Celeron 700 system.

Microsoft vs. the Competition: The Competition caves Consumers clean up
The dominance of Microsoft Office has pretty much cleared the field of competitors who hope to make money on office software. Whereas a few years ago, Corel (then WordPerfect Corporation) and Lotus (later bought out by IBM) fielded suites to compete with Microsoft, Microsoft triumphed by relentless bundling combined with a good quality product. Now that the office suites are mature, everyone who offers a suite other than Microsoft ends up giving it away (Sun) or almost giving it away (Corel). IBM still bundles Lotus SmartSuite with its computers, but does not make serious efforts to sell it separately. You can pay a lot of money for the Lotus or Wordperfect packages, but if you look around hard enough, you can either buy a package cheap, or buy the package with a new CPU for about the list price of the software package alone.
For the home or small business user, probably any of these programs should work fine. If you buy a low-end system without a productivity suite installed, I'd suggest trying StarOffice. Version 5.2 is available for Linux now and is supposed to be available for the Mac soon.

And Now for Something Completely Different Fun Stuff

www.amihotornot.com This site is all the rage, generating some of the hottest buzz in nerddom. At this site you can submit your picture and let other people rate whether you are hot or not (male or female). You can rate the pictures that others send in. In case you're wondering, as far as I can tell, everyone is fully clothed.

www.jumptheshark.com/ In this, my second column, I wonder if I jumped the shark. What does it mean to jump the shark? From the site: It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it "jumping the shark". The title comes from an episode of Happy Days where Fonzi (on water-skis but wearing his leather jacket) jumps over a live shark.

www.imdb.com/ For everything you'd want to know about any actor, movie or television show, check out the Internet movie Database.

www.edmunds.com/editorial/features/confessionsofacarsalesman/42962 Confessions of a Car Salesman is reporter Chandler Phillips' chance to play George Plimpton, and go behind the scenes at several car dealerships. Highly recommended, from my favorite car site, Edmunds.com.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/lions/Between the Lions is a PBS show that uses humor to teach kids to read. It has been phenomenally successful with my 5 year old daughter. Like the best kids shows, humor works on multiple levels. Am I the only one that sees the hidden political meaning in the song "W Trouble"?

Finally I can't say there's much buzz about this one. But it is inspirational to me.

www.provide.net/~strickland/quote.htm Chris Elliot Quote of the day

Welcome to my first of what I hope to be a regular - or semiregular contribution to the Local website. My task is to introduce you to some of the web sites that I've found useful (or fun) both at work and at home.

Who am I. First and foremost, I'm a 39 year-old married father of two kids, 5 and 3. Secondly, I am the main CI attorney at the Indianapolis West office. I've been with the Plan two and a half years. I have been an attorney since 1987, and I spent 8 years in private practice focusing on consumer law, with some civil rights and employment stuff thrown into the mix.

GOOGLE: Now, let's go surfing: http://www.google.com. For those of you who aren't privy to my (maybe too) regular responses in the office Consumer law group, I'm a Googleteer. When someone has a question, I run to my favorite search engine, www.google.com, to find the answer. Google has the best signal-to-noise ratio of any of the major search engines. I never use Lexis for statutes because word searching in Google picks up the relevant statutes faster, and in a more print-friendly format. Google is ridiculously fast. Not only that, but you can download a task bar so that you can access Google from whatever window you have open in your browser.

I also use Google to search "bad guy companies". When I get a new CI intake I routinely run the bad guy's name through Google to see if there is an obvious pattern.

Tip of the day: when I arrive at the office in the morning, I will open up a Google window, a news window and a CMS window in MS Internet Explorer. If you go type in a URL from the open window of CMS, you will have to log back in when you go back to CMS. If you type in a URL from another window, your CMS session remains unaltered.]

Carpal Tunnel: For the past 8 months I've been wrestling with carpal tunnel syndrome. This is a repetitive stress injury of the wrist that is common among computer users. It is the product of bad ergonomics. It's easy to get, and it's hard to cure. If you are also having a problem with carpal tunnel syndrome, please e-mail me at home conslaw@aol.com or at work stevenho@uawlsp.com. I'd like to know how many Plan attorneys are suffering from the problem. OSHA has just promulgated new workplace rules designed to minimize repetitive stress injuries. For a summary of these rules and a link to the OSHA site try http://www.ctsplace.com/newsletter.php.
For a Patient's Guide to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, try http://www.sechrest.com/mmg/reflib/ctd/cts/cts.html.

Consumer Bitch Sites: There are countless sites for consumer complaints, bitches, flames, whatever. Sometimes a company drives someone so mad they create a website about that company only. A popular site for venting about United Airlines is www.untied.com The more useful sites for our purposes are the general consumer sites. If you want to direct someone to a site to make a complaint, or if you are doing research on a company, try the following sites: www.consumerama.com and www.consumeraffairs.com. Of these two, www.consumerama.org is my favorite. It has a sense of humor. Problematic companies make the "naked mole rats" list. Of lesser use are some others: www.bitchaboutit.com and www.thecomplaintstation.com. There is also the more general www.deja.com.

Finally, From the Someone who has too much time on his hands file. . . I stumbled upon this site: http://www.cmongethappy.com/downloads/pfsims.html Try it out. That's it for this time. Feel free to e-mail me for any reasonable purpose.

Aloha.