Sun Microsystems delays StarOffice 8

Sun Microsystems delays StarOffice 8

One of the most formidable competitions to the Microsoft Office Suite in the retail market is the Sun Microsystems StarOffice. The latest version of this office suite based on the open source OpenOffice was scheduled to be released in July. However, the latest news in is that the launch is delayed as of now as the company stated on their website. The latest version StarOffice 8 is still not available and the company has declined to reveal when they would be launching it in the retail market.

The rumor in the market is that the company would be launching this product on September 12 at one of its quarterly launches. It was reported by an article published last week in the United Kingdom based on comments by Simon Schouten, the U.K. desktop sales manager for Sun. however, the company has said that Simon is nowhere in the equation about deciding the launch date of the product.

Sun had showcased a preview version of the application at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in Boston in the month of February. And they aim to make big by getting their customers shift from MS Office to StarOffice. However, they suffered a minor setback when Central Scotland Police decided to remove StarOffice from about 400 PCs claiming MS Office resulted in lower maintenance costs.

The company however claims that the new version would provide better compatibility with the popular MS Office Suite and bring better usability and enhanced manageability in their next release.