Sun has announced the StarOffice 9 beta software, which includes more than 1,500 new features and improvements. And for the first time, StarOffice is available on the Mac platform. These improvements will make StarOffice 9 an even stronger alternative to Microsoft Office, at a fraction of the cost.
StarOffice is a full-featured office productivity suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, database, and the ability for users to create their own custom extensions and applications.

StarOffice is based on the same underpinnings as the open source office suite OpenOffice.org. It provides a free alternative to Microsoft Office using applications that support the XML file format. Individual components of StarOffice include a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing tool, database tool and formula generator.

Up until the beta version of StarOffice 9’s release, StarOffice only supported Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems. This is the first release to offer native Mac support.

Feature Rich, Very Capable

The StarOffice 9 includes important new capabilities in several areas. You can give them all a try in the beta, and use many more features not listed here:
Interoperability

* Improved Microsoft Office compatibility, including OOXML support
* PDF import and one-click PDF export

Communication and Collaboration

* Lightning, a Calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird
* Publishing tools for blogs and wikis

Productivity

* Improvements to each of the StarOffice applications, including a Solver tool in Calc, a Database Report Builder in Base, and fine-tuned control of presentation slides in Impress

Usability

* Updated icon set
* Online update feature

Mac Platform Support

* Native port for Mac OS X
* StarOffice users on all major platforms can easily shares files and other information