I wrote yesterday:

"As to the second point, which may not be acceptable to most, e-Machines --
never missing a beat -- now also includes the complete StarOffice office
suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics) provided free by
Sun Microsystems."

After I wrote that, I decided to play with the StarOffice suite. After just a
few minutes of playing, it became obvious that Microsoft has a really serious
competitor on its hands. Sun says the products are file compatible with their
Microsoft counterparts. I don't know if that's true or not, but it did become
obvious that the Sun versions actually seem easier to use than the Microsoft
products -- and yet look very much like Microsoft Word and particularly Excel.

I am impressed.

I downloaded the StarOffice suite the very first day it was offered, sometime
last fall, but I never installed it. But since the Suite came pre-installed
with the new e-Machine, all I had to do was click on them. Now that I know
how nice they are, I suspect I'll install them on all of our PCs that don't
already have the MS Office on them.

To download a copy for yourself, the URL is:

     http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice/

but be warned, it is a big download (65MB).

On a second subject, one person wrote me about getting rid of the extra crap
that HP puts into their Pavilion series, but in this instance, on an HP
laptop. So as my comments won't be overexaggerated it, I'm including here
what I wrote back:

=======================================

> Anyway, my question is related to your comments regarding HP's Pavilion
>  products.  I purchased their N3295 laptop last night.  While making my
>  decision, I kept in the back of my mind the comments you made regarding all
>  the extra "features" the HP has and how it degrades performance.  I figured
>  I wouldn't be able to take the laptop apart myself (without severely
>  negating the warranty) to get serial numbers, etc.  Do you have any
>  suggestions on what I can do to get rid of some of the extraneous stuff
>  without stripping the operating system and installing a non-HP supplied
>  version?

I would play with your new machine for at least a week or two before I did
anything. The Pavilions weren't merely degraded, they were unusable. If you
don't notice anything too much wrong with your machine, I'd just leave it
alone.

The Pavilions we ordered were the top of the line (DVD, 10/100MB NIC, CD-R/W,
250 MB Zip drive, etc.). Nonetheless, you couldn't watch a movie, run QCTerm,
and AOL all at the same time without it crashing to the point that you
actually had to unplug the power cord to get it to reset. I've never seen a
PC so badly constructed as that, not even from your teenage neighbor's son
who builds them in his basement.

Nor could you even perform a single task on an otherwise empty machine
without it occasionally jerking control away from you for a moment or two. As
I said, no one here would even use the things until I rebuilt the operating
system from scratch.

I don't know whether these qualities are characteristic of the Pavilion line
as a whole or simply of the version we bought. Nonetheless, I wouldn't do
anything until you've had enough time to see if your machine acts the same
way.

If you do decide to rebuild the operating system, you can probably obtain a
list of all of the various cards that are in the device from either
(hopefully) an HP web page or from HP support themselves -- although I
couldn't get a sufficiently accurate list that I felt comfortable enough with
that I was sure that I was installing the proper drivers.

=========================================

It's difficult for me to say how awful these machines were before they were
rebuilt. However, let me add the one really nice thing about the Pavilion
series is that it's built to be worked on. Only one thumb capture screw holds
a side panel on, so it's extremely easy to open up and add or replace cards.

Greg suggested that the extra keyboard keys acted as substantial productivity
enhancers and shouldn't be removed. Let me say that to a degree, that was
true. Because the DVD's controls were now on the keyboard, I found that I
could push the movie PAUSE or MUTE buttons much faster, allowing me to answer
my phone in one ring rather than the more normal two or three rings, as
compared to before when I had to fumble around with the on-screen controls
:-). Otherwise, having hotlinks to eBay and the Disney Channel didn't seem to
do all that much to increase my productivity and won't be particularly missed.

More seriously, these extra buttons didn't do a thing to increase
productivity. They were simply one more irritating connivance to get your
eyeballs to a few selected, pre-paid web sites. Hopefully, they will
disappear over time under their own steam, once the dot-com shakeout is
complete.

Wirt Atmar