StarOffice Companion
Author: Solveig Haugland, Floyd Jones
List Price: $39.99
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ISBN: 0130384739
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (24 September, 2002)
Sales Rank: 60,464
Average Customer Rating: 4.63 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
My bible
I used the Companion 5.2 til it was dogeared and I got the 6.0 update as soon as it was out. Definitely worth it; lots of stuff is the same but they changed a bunch of stuff too, including all the database connection windows and it's easier now but the mail merge is a lot easier to figure out with the book. It tells you how to do Oracle connections and Access and stuff, with examples. I found out some new stuff too on the drawing program which either they added to the program or the authors didn't document last time. So it's worth getting the new version. I've generally found that if you can do it, it's in the index, and if it's not there, you can't do it.I think the part I like best is they tell you if stuff doesn't work, or if it's hard to do and you should try something else. Like someone who really uses the stuff not just the company line on how it's supposed to work.
No actual documentation, still, on how to write macros, but I found some online stuff that workd.
Works for OpenOffice.org too, which I just downloaded and seems to be really similar.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Great. A "must have" for StarOffice
Great book, clearly written (and light hearted which seems sadly rare in technical books) and perhaps most valuable of all, _great_index_. You have a problem, you look in the index, you find the section you need, and then you find a clear, concise, to the point description of how to do what you need.StarOffice (version 6.0) is a great product (I'm using it on Windows, but I understand it runs on Linux and Solaris too). It's massively better value for money than anything micky$loth ever produced (it would be better value even at two or three times the price) but it's user interface is somewhat unfamiliar (well, duh, it's not micky$loth, so of course it's unfamiliar) and a little help learning your way around is worth it's weight in gold. Fortunately this multi-pound gem doesn't cost that much :)
Get StarOffice, get this book, get on with your life, and find something more interesting to spend those license fees on than giving them to someone so rich he doesn't need it anyway ;>
Rating: 4 out of 5
Great Reference
Polished reference work. Well written if a bit terse, but there is a lot of ground to cover in only 1000+ pages! Great cross references and index. Excellent and appreciated cross references within text and to on-line support sites. Not intended as a teaching tool. It has minimum examples and excercises. Frank about current bugs and inadequacies (few though they may be.) Overall, similar in usefullness to the "Star Office Users Guide", just a lot more information and a bigger package.Definitely worth getting if you don't have the user's guide.
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