Does anyone out there in Britain have a Canon Starwriter 80, 70, or 300 model of word-processor that is no longer wanted and would be free to a good home? Namely, mine. After many years of faithful service, my dear old Starwriter 80 recently went to that great word-processing office in the sky, and left behind all its worldly goods with me, which consist of around 100 floppy discs containing articles and book manuscripts of mine that are not PC-compatible, but which I now urgently need to access.
I'm discovering that a fully-working Starwriter is as rare and elusive as any cryptid, so if there is indeed any good soul out there willing to donate theirs to me (must be an 80, 70, or 300 model, nothing else), I would be exceedingly grateful. Moreover, in exchange for your covering the p&p, I'd be more than happy to send you a personally-inscribed copy of my Dr Shuker's Casebook, or the rare British edition of From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings. Please email me at karlshuker@aol.com as usual if you can help - thanks immensely!
I'm discovering that a fully-working Starwriter is as rare and elusive as any cryptid, so if there is indeed any good soul out there willing to donate theirs to me (must be an 80, 70, or 300 model, nothing else), I would be exceedingly grateful. Moreover, in exchange for your covering the p&p, I'd be more than happy to send you a personally-inscribed copy of my Dr Shuker's Casebook, or the rare British edition of From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings. Please email me at karlshuker@aol.com as usual if you can help - thanks immensely!
OpenOffice 3.0 will open files from various versions of StarWriter: it's a free download at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.openoffice.org
You will need a PC with a floppy drive, obviously, but you should be able to open the files and save in Word format without having to obtain a StarWriter.
I had the same problem. I had a StarWriter 300 but gave it to my brother. He's just got a lap top so presumably has no use for it. If he hasn't ditched it, I'll see if I can get it for you.
ReplyDeleteOpen Office does open StarWriter files as Vasily says, though, and Microsoft NotePad will open some, but not all. Celtx 9.0 will also open some, but again not all. Not sure why....
LuxSoft of Luxulyan can convert the files so that they can be opened and edited Windows word processing programs .... without losing the text formatting.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.luxsoft.demon.co.uk/lux/cconv.html
Hi everyone, Many thanks indeed for your suggestions. I'll certainly try the office programme, but if your brother does still have his Starwriter but doesn't want it, Geordie, I'd definitely like to have it if it's ok for you to send it to me, as it would be great to read the discs directly without having to convert each one. Re the luxsoft company: I've contacted them and they charge £5 per disc for conversion, but as I've over 100 it would work out rather expensive. All the best, Karl
ReplyDeleteI am stating the obvious here but if all else fails have you considered buying one off eBay,
ReplyDeleteeither ebay.co.uk or ebay.com
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteYes, I've actually bought two off eBay, neither of which worked when tried! Happily, I did get a full refund on both occasions, but I now have three non-functioning Starwriters in boxes on top of a wardrobe, so you'll understand when I say that I'm somewhat reluctant now to go down that avenue a third time, but thanks for the suggestion, which I appreciate.
All the best, Karl