Posted on 10/14/2008 2:09:48 PM PDT by N3WBI3
OpenOffice 3 has been officially released, with one of its biggest enhancements being support for file formats in Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Office 2007.
The debut of the open source productivity suite follows a three-year development cycle. Nevertheless, some reviewers questioned whether the upgrade was sufficient to be billed as a full upgrade.
Released on Monday, the upgrade attracted enough attention to overwhelm the OpenOffice.org Web site. On Tuesday, the site still appeared to be having trouble with the load. "Apologies -- our Web site is struggling to cope with the unprecedented demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org," the site said. "The technical teams are trying to come up with a solution."
The software suite combines word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools similar to the Microsoft Office suite. The open source version, however, is free, making it an attractive alternative for people or businesses that need only basic capabilities.
The biggest improvement to OpenOffice 3 is the ability to open Office 2007 files. However, some files, such as .docx, .xisx, and .pptx, can only be read. The second major enhancement is a new version for the Apple Mac. The upgrade installs and runs like a normal OS X application.
However, the new features and better performance of the upgrade failed to impress some reviewers. "OpenOffice 3 might as well be OpenOffice 2.5," said Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post. "Nearly all of the things I liked and disliked in that release live on in this edition."
Linux Format, a British magazine, also was not sure OpenOffice 3 could be considered a full upgrade. "Does it justify the jump in major version?" the magazine asked. "We're not convinced, but the 2.x series has been around for a while and this release does present a fresh face. ... On balance, the new OpenOffice.org release is a step forward, and if they can speed it up a bit, we'll be more than happy."
NeoOffice 3.0 (Native Mac version) Early Access Program starts 15 November 2008 (http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php)
OSS Ping
Thanks for the ping. I’ll check out the latest version as soon as possible!
As worthless as Office 07 is, I will get to OO 3 sometime.
how is is worthless?
For some reason there was this huge push to migrate to 2007 ASAP even though most other depts. are still on 03 and will be for a long time. I liked 03 myself.
Downloaded it yesterday on a new machine. I haven’t gotten to try it out yet.
So Office 7 sucks because your users have the collective IQ of a rutabaga? hmmm, okay I guess it does suck then.
99.999% of the time, they don't need anything more than Word97.
I think I should start sending people OoO docs and act surprised when they can't open it.
Nice idea, but I do business with Fortune 500 companies. They do not expect to trade information with you in freeware formats. Sorry, but until they can fully read and write Office formats, it is a waste of time for me.
Umm OO has out of the box support for everything short of the latest MS XML stuff, you know the stuff most people use). It also supports the latest MS stuff with a plugin.
by ‘freeware’ format do you mean one recognized by international standards bodies with complete transparency? one thar even MS has plugin support for?
I've been pushing for my company to support OOo for a while, but they keep refusing. Finally, a customer sent me a .odt file. Gave me the excuse I needed to install OOo. :)
Especially because diffs and version control work way better on odt than the ms formats..
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