Kirchheim-Heimstetten, Germany - Sun Microsystems intends offering a beta version of its StarOffice 9 office suite as a free download. The company said the download would be available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris operating systems.

StarOffice 9 will have about 1,500 new functions that weren't available with Version 8. New import filters should make it easier to transfer documents to and from MS Office 2007. The Sun Weblog Publisher allows blog entries to be published from StarOffice 9. The final commercial version is scheduled for release in October.

Internet: www. sun. com/so9beta_download (dpa)