This month, StarOffice 8 was included in the 7th Edition of the "Software for Small Business" book. Author Iain Williamson reviewed StarOffice 8, among other products, to compile this comprehensive guide to programs that will help readers improve efficiency and productivity in their IT environments. Iain took a look at StarOffice Writer, StarOffice Draw, StarOffice Impress and StarOffice Calc Spreadsheet, weaving his reviews of each program throughout the book (under the appropriate chapters.)

First, with StarOffice Writer, Iain praised the program's "greatly improved" compatibility with Microsoft Word, noting he didn't have any difficulties opening Word files during his testing. He went on to discuss the program's many features, concluding that Writer is "all in all, a very powerful introductory processing program that contains most of the features that would be required by the average user...and at a very reasonable price!"

Next, Iain took a look at StarOffice Draw, which he claimed is a "very neat little vector-based drawing program." He noted he was impressed with its ease of use and various functions. Moving on to StarOffice Impress, he highlighted the program's wide variety of templates and the fact that it draws on other components of StarOffice to create effective presentations ("This is powerful stuff for an inexpensive little program!") Finally, Iain found StarOffice Calc to be a "great" program and was especially intrigued by its ability to import graphic images from a theme library.

Overall, great coverage for StarOffice 8.