Sun StarOffice 5.1 for Windows

Author: Brian Proffitt
List Price: $29.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0761526935
Publisher: Premier Press (March, 2000)
Sales Rank: 127,592
Average Customer Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 1 out of 5
Absolutely the worst!
This is the worst computer book I have ever read. Proffitt jumps from thought to thought with no real regard for flow of task, idea or thought. The coverage on each topic merely scrapes the surface and always leaves you wanting more. I agree with another reviewer in the idea that the author pretty much assumes you know how word processors, spreadsheets, etc. work and says "StarOffice is great for this" without explaining the how-to of what he's talking about. The order in which topics are covered is really out of wack. He covers advanced things like customizing toolbars and menus before explaining the basics of creating and editing documents. There are statements made that leave you wanting more explanation, but alas, Proffitt offers none. For example: "Every icon on the Taskbar has a context menu associated with it. To access these context menus, you must right-click the icon." Well, would you mind covering these context menus and telling me about what they do? Nope, not in this book. Fortunately I got this book at a closeout store here in town for dirt cheap. I wouldn't have bought it had I known what it was like. If I could have rated it 0 or 1/2 a star I would have. Get "Special Edition Using StarOffice" instead. It may be a little more, but it is SO much better.

Rating: 1 out of 5
You Must Be Joking
The notion that this book is good for beginners is an absolute joke. I have been typing since I was 13, and I have no trouble following instructions. But figuring out how to do simple things with StarOffice has been a nightmare, and Brian Proffitt's book is no help at all.

Just like the program itself, this book assumes that you must already know how to use it in order to use it. In this book there is no STEP ONE. There are scores of pages telling you how "powerful" this suite is, but the word TAB does not appear in the index! Typewriters have had tab buttons for about a century, but nowhere does the word appear on the StarOffice desktop. Brian Proffitt seems to think this basic information will be magically imprinted in our brains when we turn on the program.

I am sick of bloated programs that brag about how user friendly they are, only to present you "help" features that drive you around in circles. And I am sick of computer books that have no beginning point.

Maybe someday someone will write a book for StarOffice that explains its bewildering array of features in a logical fashion for someone who has no idea what is in there. Computer books seem to be either of the condescending "Dummies" variety, or of the you-already-have-to-know-before-you-start-reading variety. Proffitt's book it definitely in the latter category.

Rating: 3 out of 5
Covers subset of StarOffice
It's an okay book for what it does. It covers selected features in simple,well explained procedures, step by step. Some people might enjoy the advice on how to create well designed presentations and Web pages. But it's far from complete. It's as if the author decided to cover the top 20-30 tasks in most of the programs and just leave out the rest. How do I put in a portrait page in a landscape document? I still have no idea. The author also completely left out StarImage (for graphics editing, changing pixels, stuff like that). I would think that someone other than myself might notice that an entire program didn't get covered.

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