OpenOffice 3.0 Released

Yesterday OpenOffice 3.0 has been released and it has been a big hit.

A so big hit that the download servers had serious problems to stay up and still now the site is displaying a simple HTML page with the download links.

As typical for a major upgrade, OpenOffice 3.0 include a myriad of changes from the previous version. One of them for example is the support of the new Microsoft’s Office 2007 file format (.docx, .xlsx, and .pptx) even if only in read mode for the moment.

Other changes include an overhauled equation editor, a better mail merge wizard, improved label templates, and OpenOffice.org Calc support to 1,024 columns.

Another big difference is that now OpenOffice supports Mac OS natively and therefore it no longer need to have X11, the Unix windowing environment, installed; this feature has been possible thank to Sun Microsystems that assigned company-paid engineers to the OpenOffice.org project.

With OpenOffice 3, the suite continue its competition battle versus Microsoft Office as it offers almost any feature that Office does, but for much less dollars … all less dollars since it is totally free for both personal and business use.

Links
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/