Online Office Suites

Having read several recent articles and blog posts about online office suites, I can now see the proverbial "writing on the wall." CNET's News.com reports that Sun and Google will announce a "collaborative effort" TODAY! Sun has developed the open source Open Office suite and the commercially available Star Office. Could it be that Google will take either of these applications online, and make them freely available to anyone? Stay tuned!

We all know that Microsoft Office is the industry standard for office suites, but at a price point that many schools are finding difficult to afford. Several more affordable office suites promise Microsoft Office compatibility and these are becoming increasingly popular:

You can download the free Open Office here.

NewsForge has a review of Star Office 8 posted on their website. Schools can license Star Office for $25 and this includes allowing students to install the software on their home computers!

For links to several currently available online office suites, see Richard McManus' ZD Net Blog.

UPDATE from the Sun Microsystems website:

The agreement between Sun and Google also kicks off further collaboration between the companies on projects like OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that is the world's leading suite on the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Linux--and the leading alternative suite on Microsoft Windows.

(It's the handwriting on the wall! Do you see it too?)