Monday, August 15, 2005

Sun Microsystems is now planning to release its next version of StarOffice in September, two months later than originally planned.

In May, Sun said that StarOffice 8, which has been in beta since February, would debut in July. But Simon Schouten, the U.K. desktop sales manager for Sun, said Friday that StarOffice 8 will be released Sept. 12, during the company's quarterly product launch event.

The date was changed to allow Sun to launch new versions of other desktop products on the same date, Schouten said. The other products include Java Desktop System, Tarantella and Sun Ray.

"Quite simply, there's a load of other stuff happening around the desktop portfolio, so the company decided that they'd rather do a September StarOffice launch," he said.