Network Computer, Inc. (NCI) and Star Division recently announced a joint-licensing agreement that will bundle Star Division's StarOffice software suite with NCI's NC Server software. StarOffice delivers a fully-integrated productivity suite for network computers and for personal computers, without sacrificing speed or performance. This should be especially useful for companies, or indiviuals migrating to a network computing environment. Currently available for trial download on several platforms including Win95, NT, and (a 3.1 version for) Linux, StarOffice 4.0 is compatible with today's leading office suite, which eases migration by enabling access to legacy files and data through an intuitive user interface.

Star Division has done the impossible by designing, from the ground up, a full-featured office suite that uses the same interface on PCs, workstations, and network computers. StarOffice's popularity and wide acceptance in Europe demonstrates how the Internet is enabling up-and-coming companies to design software that simplifies computing, and lowers the cost of ownership.

StarOffice 4.0

StarOffice is a comprehensive and fully-integrated software suite for business and personal productivity. It provides powerful Web-enabled word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, email, news, charting and graphics applications. Users can access existing Microsoft Office files and data to create spreadsheets, presentations and documents and save all data in Microsoft formats or as HTML files to post on the Web or Newsgroup servers.

The highly-integrated features of the StarOffice desktop allow for quick navigation between applications. Users can easily exchange any type of data such as text, graphics, charts and spreadsheets between the different StarOffice components without having to launch, or switch between separate programs.

NC News has encountered a few minor quirks, and incompatibilities between StarOffice 4, and some of our (Win95) software, but nothing serious. Certainly nothing that compares to the crashes, and data losses we've experienced in testing Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4. All in all, this is the most interesting package we've seen.

Client-Server Version

Requiring less than 2 megabytes of memory on the network computer, the client-server version of StarOffice delivers powerful performance from a centrally-administered application server. StarOffice is divided into a unique architecture called Universal Network Objects (UNO). Through UNO, StarOffice provides a fast, reliable and performant system when downloading the application to individual network computers by continually adjusting the degree of load capacity on both the client and server.

"The combination of NCI's network computer software and Star Division's StarOffice will create many new opportunities for companies that have considered migrating to network computers," said Marco Boerries, President and CEO of Star Division. "MIS departments will effectively lower their administration costs and headaches by distributing and maintaining StarOffice, and all data from a central server. Additionally, corporate users will have an integrated and feature rich desktop alternative that can easily co-exist with today's personal computers."

StarOffice augments NCI's family of personal productivity software which includes two Java-based tools for corporate users called Oracle's Hat Trick, utility applications such as a calendar, HTML editor, address book and electronic mail and emulators for mainframe computing.

StarOffice will be available with a version of the NC Network in the Box and NC Administration Server in November, 1997. Pricing and bundling details will be announced then.

About Star Division

Star Division is the world's pioneering provider of integrated Internet software for personal and office productivity. Optimized for network computing environments, Star Division's StarOffice suite is Germany's second most popular office productivity software. Located in Hamburg Germany, Star Division can be reached at +49.40.23.646.500.

About Network Computer, Inc.

Network Computer, Inc. (NCI) is a software innovator with a mission to deliver affordable and easy to use products that tap the power of the global Internet. Formed in 1996, NCI is an affiliate of Oracle Corp. and offers its network computer software and services to corporations, homes and communities. NCI is based in Redwood Shores, California, and can be reached at 650/631-4600.