[techtalk] Applixware

[Lindsay Walker]

I have to say that I never used the older versions of ApplixWare, only the
latest version which did not run well at all on Sun systems. I've never used
it on a Linux system as I use Star Office at home. It would regularly crash
the machines but then they only had 32MB RAM. As you would be running this
under Linux, I would pay more attention to the opinions of the people who
use it on Linux. Sun used ApplixWare in a server-based environment which may
have contributed to the problems that they had with it.

Hopefully, my experience with ApplixWare was not the norm.

Good luck with whichever suite you go with.

Lindsay

----- Original Message -----
From: Amanda Owens <amowens at radonc.duke.edu>
To: <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: [techtalk] Applixware


> I have been using both Applixware (4.3 - we can't afford to upgrade yet)
> and Sun's StarOffice 5.1a at work, and trying to get a feel for both.
> I've been running Applixware 4.3 at home and at work for about 3 years
> now. I got a student version of Applix from Red hat for $79, but you can
> find a retail version of the product for about that price in stores such
> as Borders and CompUSA. Star Office is downloadable from
staroffice.sun.com.
>
> Now, the basics said - I'm used to Applix. There are things it does that
> I find annoying (like not being able to click on a cell in the
> spreadsheet, and drag the corner down the column to 'cut and paste' to
> the rest of the cells like you can in Excel and SO.) but I suppose I'm
> used to it. For basic text writing and basic spreadsheet operations, it
> seems robust. I've never had it crash on me that I can think of - not on
> an actually stable system at least.
>
> StarOffice I couldn't get to install. We have nfs-mounted home
> directories, so while the program installed and runs fine for root, the
> /net install and subsequent user installs fail - a user can't run the
> program because of some nfs problems that sun has yet to fix. It was
> intended as a desktop application, not a server-based workstation app, so
> this is understandable, and if you don't have a server-based LAN, then
> you're fine. I have it installed on a Sun in our network, and can run it
> fine as a user from there - so I have it displaying from that machine to
> my own desktop on linux. The program seems slow, and from what I've
> heard, it'll eat up whatever memory you have, as well as pounding the CPU
> heavilly. There are things I have yet to figure out how to do in Star
> Office (just yesterday, I was trying to print a spreadsheet on one page,
> which is as easy as clicking a 'print to fit' button in Applix) but I had
> to play with size percentages in SO. Give me a program that'll figure out
> how big it needs to be by itself, anyday) that I can do easilly in
> Applix. StarOffice is pretty, and probably easier to use if you're used
> to MS, but it's still got some bugs, and I'd give Sun some time to work
> them out.
>
> This said, I personally prefer Applix, and I intend to fork over the
> $79-$99 to pick up the latest version. They put out a good product, and
> it works. Their latest (4.4.1 or better) version of the product will read
> Office 97 documents, and I *assume* they'll either have a patch for
> Office 2000 documents, or will have a new version out soon that will
> handle them. The current version I use only reads Word 6 or older docs.
> (Bad Microsoft for changing their file format with each Office revision,
> yet leaving the extension the same. *That* is a bad business practice
> that should have been brought up in the DOJ trial - it makes competition
> far more difficult...) Star Office is nice, and it seems to be a
> well-rounded suite. But the word processor (in my case) adds odd ?'s
> before some of the punctuation on the screen that prints out when you
> print it, the spreadsheet seems somewhat buggy (the exact same
> calculations on both spreadsheets yielded different answers. Doing the
> calculations in Matlab yielded answers that agree with Applix), and the
> database isn't at all intuitive (I've used Paradox and Access, and Star
> Office's database isn't as nice as paradox 7. I'm not as familiar with
> access, but I don't recall having the same problems with that that I did
> with Star Office.)
>
> That's my comparative review.
> Hope it helps *someone* :)
>
> Mur!
>
> On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, Lindsay Walker wrote:
>
> > I used Applixware a lot when I was working at Sun Micro and it drove me
mad.
> > It's not very stable and, compared to Star Office, its UI is terrible. I
> > wouldn't pay the money for Applixware when you could get Star Office for
> > free and its a much better product.
> >
>
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>
>


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