StarOffice

StarOffice is the commercial version of OpenOffice.org, produced and distributed by Sun Microsystems.

StarOffice is an office suite, including a applications for word processing, presentations, vector graphics, formula editing, spreadsheet calculations, and databases. It is available for many different platforms, including Microsoft Windows, various Unix systems with the X Window System, GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X.

Sun Microsystems bought the German company StarDivision in 1999 and with it the office suite StarOffice. Shortly after this purchase, Sun Microsystems decided to release the source code to the office suite as open source under the name OpenOffice.org.

Various versions of StarOffice have been released:

StarOffice 5.2 is the original from StarDivision.
StarOffice 6 is based on OpenOffice.org release 1.0.
StarOffice 7 is based on OpenOffice.org release 1.1.
StarOffice 8 is based on OpenOffice.org release 2.X.

You can learn more about StarOffice at Sun's StarOffice product page.

There are other derivatives of OpenOffice.org

NeoOffice is an open source version for Mac OS X that adds full support for the Aqua user interface. The general ports of OOo to Mac OS X require an X Window extension that does use it's own look and feel for user interactions.
OpenOffice.org Novell Edition is an open source version maintained by Novell. It adds new components that are developed by Novell Inc. and donated back to the full project, but haven't made it yet back into the general code base.

Using StarOffice

As a close cousin of OpenOffie.org, you can use all screencasts in Plan-B as well. In fact in most cases you won't notice any difference.

The following screencasts demonstrate features of OpenOffice.org such as how to start using Open Office:

OpenOffice.org™ is a trademark of OpenOffice.org.
Microsoft® and Windows® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.