OpenOffice 3 available now
Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:00PM EDT
See Comments (8)
Years in the making, the latest version of the best (not to mention free) alternative to Microsoft Office is finally available. While it won't be officially released until next week, you can download it now via mirror distribution sites (link courtesy Lifehacker).
OpenOffice 3 is an incremental yet valuable update to the old version of the software. All the previous components (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, simple database, drawing tool) are intact, with modest upgrades all around.
One key upgrade is support for Office 2007 documents. OpenOffice 2 really couldn't handle DOCX or XLSX documents at all, but now it does a respectable job of opening them for editing and maintaining existing formatting reasonably well. While you're likely to experience some hiccups here and there, it's probably good enough for most users who need occasional access to an Office '07 doc. One word of warning: OpenOffice can't save into a Microsoft format beyond the one used for Office 2000/XP, so while you can read 2003/2007 files, you'll have to save them in an older format (or in OpenOffice's native format). Another nice feature in the word processor: Inline comments (the not-for-printing type) look much better now than before.
PDF support, one of OpenOffice's biggest benefits and something wholly absent in Office, is even better now. You still can't open PDFs for editing, but you can now set copious PDF export settings for other documents, including resolution, whether PDFs can be edited, and so on.
Spreadsheets are now expanded: You can now have 1024 columns of data instead of a mere 256. There's also a new solver function like Excel has long since had. Finally, charting options are expanded and upgraded and look better than before.
There's also a very Microsoft-like "start center" which lets you pick which app you want to launch from a welcome screen. OpenOffice is crowing about it, but I find it mostly useless overhead.
Finally, Mac users will also love that OpenOffice now runs natively in OS X without X11. I'm running it on a Windows machine but so far most Mac guys seem pretty wild about it.
Grab it now and gear up for a fun weekend of making spreadsheets and writing memos! I mentioned it's free, right?
Comments on OpenOffice 3 available now
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2 Posted by clefmeister on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:26PM EDT Report Abuse
I've run the release candidates for OS X for a while now, and OO.org 3 is definitely good on the Office 2007 support field. I think, though, that NeoOffice is a more stable implementation and has better support for opening other Microsoft documents (namely Microsoft Works documents, which the OO.org 3 release candidates didn't seem to know anything about).
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3 Posted by gullwingdoors on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:14PM EDT Report Abuse
Ok, that's weird. While installing OOo3, it told me I had to shut down Windows Explorer to complete the install. I tried ignoring it, and it wouldn't work. Eventually I gave in, shut down explorer through the task manager, and just let the installation run by itself, and it worked. I can't imagine why it would need to be installed without explorer running. Anyone else encounter something similar?
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4 Posted by troy_hmr on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:22PM EDT Report Abuse
Am glad there is an alternative to MS Office am going to download it now
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5 Posted by smada_bor on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:28PM EDT Report Abuse
I had to use the task manager to shutdown explorer too. Weird that the install would require that.
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6 Posted by doncolleen138 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:46PM EDT Report Abuse
Windows Internet Explorer is broken and getting worst. MS is now charging for a fix on there broken preinstalled file. It cost to get your PC back to what thay call working style. I have a three month old HP Vista Pavilion 64 bit that MS can't fix. So just stop helping me even thou I shelled out over a grand for this system. I've tryed to change from WME to to no avail. Neither Microsoft, HP or anybody will help be fix it. Don
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7 Posted by dorenemorley on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:47PM EDT Report Abuse
I encountered a problem, whenever my laptop starts up with in seconds to minutes there is a loud sound and the title bar, menu bar,standard tollbar, and the status bar, task bar turns black. It goes away I do not see it again until the laptop is started up again. I have had problems with alot of crashing. My warranty ran out before this started. the laptop is 13 months old. It is a dell inspirion 1520. Can any one steer me in the right direction what the problem could be. Thanks.
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8 Posted by g33kp0w3r on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:05PM EDT Report Abuse
Good luck downloading it right now - too much demand. But I have OOo 3 RC4 (probably the same because it was released just last week) and by the way it opens MOST Office 2007 docs but will only save as legacy .doc, .xls, etc. Not a deal killer for most. Also, It will not open encrypted (password protected) office 2007 files! And guess what - Excel Viewer 2007 won't either! It will open password protected 2003 files. So the security is not top notch but then again we aren't using OOo because we want the best but because we want "pretty good" for free. gullwingdoors: About closing IE to install, I usually do that anyway just because it is less likely to fail. Some installations will also fail if you don't close firewall, antivirus, etc.
1 Posted by gullwingdoors on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:14PM EDT Report Abuse
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting for this one! Docx support = uninstalling Microsoft Office again = happier computer :)