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computerwriter.com
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Star Office 5.2, Canon BJC 2100Toronto Star Fast Forward column for August 31, 2000 Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000. All rights reserved Star OfficeSeveral months ago, I wrote a review of Sun Microsystems' Star Office 5.1. This is the free office suite software that has gathered quite a cult following among those who dislike (a) large companies such as Microsoft, Corel, and IBM/Lotus and all their works, (b) paying for computer software (starting at anywhere from around $200 for upgrades to over $1,200 for full-blown office suites), (c) paying slightly less for less robust packages (such as Microsoft Works), or (d) all of the above. I mention this because Sun has released an update to the suite, Star Office 5.2, and it has cleaned up some, but not all, of the problems with 5.1. To begin with Star Office 5.2 didn't clobber my Diamond Viper V770's video driver (I consider that a major improvement). Sun's major target in this effort is obviously Microsoft. While version 5.1 had no problem importing various MS Office file formats, it was a little less successful in exporting them in file formats that anything else understood. With 5.2, at least, you can export a Star Office text document to WinWord 2000 and load it back into Word without much difficulty. If you have to exchange files with someone using WordPerfect, however, you're going to be out of luck. Star Office will import a WordPerfect 9 file, but despite there being several WordPerfect export filters you can install with the suite, they don't show up on the Save As dialogue (i.e., you can't get there from here). Attempting to open the WinWord "DOC" format that Star Office creates in WordPerfect brought up a complaint from Corel's product saying, "You don't have German installed..." and queries about whether I wanted to use new or old German spelling on some words it thought it found (yes, weird). Oh well, with Microsoft owning most of the office suite market, I guess that isn't such a big deal. What you get for "free" (unless you have to pay for downloading), is really quite amazing. There are word processor, spreadsheet, database, charting, and presentation applications as the core business tools. You also get an HTML editor for creating Web pages, vector drawing (with 3D effects), image editor (for photos), and an internal browser, news reader, and e-mail client (in case you want nothing to do with Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator). For Windows, the download is about 80 MB, but there are versions for Linux and Solaris (on both Intel and SunSPARC platforms) as well. And you have a choice of languages in which to work in all versions, including Danish, Dutch, French, German (old or new spelling or both), Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and both US and UK English. The price of Star Office 5.2 (free) makes it worth a try. The variety of the modules may just make it the only software you'll need for most things you'll want to do with a PC (sorry, there's no Mac version). And you get an advantage or two: for example, nasty Visual Basic macro viruses written for Word or Excel won't execute in Star Office. More info and downloads are at www.staroffice.com. No Internet connection? You can call 1-800-786-7638 or 1-512-434-1511 and order a CD and documentation for $39.95 US. Print this...One of the more popular inkjet printers being bundled as deals with a variety of computers this summer is Canon's BJC-2100. Canon doesn't command the lead in Canadian printer sales - that particular position is currently in Hewlett Packard's fist - but it's either number two or three, depending on the quarter. Once you get through the hassle of installing it (see below), the BJC-2100 has much to recommend it. It's reasonably quick (five pages per minute in draft mode, monochrome) relative to its "estimated street" price of $129 CDN. On a more robust task, printing an 8 by 10 colour photograph at its highest (720 by 320) resolution on glossy phto paper, it fell into about the middle of the road, taking 9 minutes, 12 seconds to do the job (compared to under 4 minutes for a printer nearly 5 times as expensive and over 12 minutes for another that was only twice as costly). Unfortunately, the output quality of the BJC 2100 on my standard photo test, using its standard two cartridges (one black, the second with yellow, cyan, and magenta and as opposed to its optional photo ink cartridges) was, to put it mildly, awful. Despite having chosen driver settings that were supposed to optimize photographs, flesh tones were washed out, there was heavy solarization distortion in dark shadow areas; there was noticeable streaking in areas of solid colour and the printer left a lovely set of rainbow streaks across the bottom of the page. Frankly, I'd rate it as the worst example out of nearly a dozen printers tested this year (albeit that all of them cost more - but sometimes only a little more - than the BJC 2100). However, if you're planning to use the printer for standard correspondence, or perhaps to stick a couple of graphs into the homework assignment, no one is going to complain about how long it takes the pages to print or about the quality of either the graphics or the text (the blacks are plenty black and, although the colours are a little washed out, no one is going to be able to tell that it wasn't exactly what you had in mind). It also has an optional scanner attachment I didn't test, but for an additional $186 (MSRP - CDN), you can use the printer to scan pages (hint: there are similarly priced flat-bed scanners around that are more flexible in terms of the size and thickness of what they can scan). Non-Universal: Aside from my carping about the photographic output, my major complaint about the BJC-2100 is in its installation. The printer is both Wintel and Mac compatible and supports both parallel (Windows only) and Universal Serial Bus (USB) connectivity. There are clear instructions, with separate instruction sheets in both English and French, for both operating systems and connection options. If you follow them carefully, you shouldn't encounter any problems. But you'd best read and follow them, because Canon has managed to blow the USB concept of "universality" all to Hell with its installation. The USB "standard" generally works this way. With a powered-up computer and USB device, you connect the USB cable and - Voila! -- the device is detected, then you're given instruction on software installation. No fuss; no bother. Unfortunately, Canon has chosen (for reasons they couldn't fully explain in time for my deadline and never could, later), to abandon this approach and, if you take it anyway by mistake (in other words if you don't read the instructions), the printer won't work. You have to start the install with the printer unconnected and unplugged. Sigh. This sort of thing makes me want to bite things. You can get more info on the Canon BJC-2100 through www.canon.ca or by calling 1-800-263-1121. |
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