Sun unveils streamlined StarOffice

NEWS Sun Microsystems has showcased a streamlined version 6.0 of StarOffice at the Linuxworld conference in New York. StarOffice 5.2, the current version of the application, has been accused by some detractors of taking over PCs by loading all its programs simultaneously and being slow to run. However, according to US wires, version 6.0 will solve some of these problems by opening and running applications independently. The software runs on Unix, Linux and Windows operating systems. Plans to port the application to Mac OS X were abandoned earlier this year. StarOffice 6.0 will be half the size of version 5.2 and employ non-propriety XML-based file formats that anyone can emulate. In June, Sun announced that the US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has signed up for 25,000 units of StarOffice 5.2, running on 10,000 Unix workstations at 600 client organisations. The beta release of the software will be released in October.