Sun/Apple Collaborating on StarOffice

, Sun Microsystems' Java-based competitor of Microsoft's Office according to this News.Com article. The schedule calls for having a final OS X version in 2003 when Microsoft's business relationship with Apple starts getting murky according to Kevin Browne, manager of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, as reported elsewhere.

At Macworld we received a copy of ThinkFree's Office, also a Java-based office suite, and have been using it since without many problems so far. We have mostly used the word processing and presentation modules--they handle M$ Word and many PowerPoint files just fine. Our PowerPoint difficulties have been with shadowed text and transitions. ThinkFree Office has an Aqua interface already and it sells for a mere $49.95, less than AppleWorks 6.x.