It isn't that tough to convince someone to give up Microsoft Word in exchange for a free alternative that does 98 percent of the same stuff... but getting people to drop Microsoft Outlook is a whole other animal. People are just really, really attached to their email, and I can understand that.

Thunderbird is the open source alternative to Outlook, and while it's been around for years, I've never found it as useful as Microsoft's original. Bugs abound, and it's just not as polished an application. But nonetheless, Thunderbird may soon be heading into the OpenOffice.org family, where it's set to become part of the suite with the upcoming 3.0 revision.

With bug fixes and improved calendaring support, Thunderbird might be improving its odds as a potential Outlook killer. However, last week the project lost two of its full-time developers, so everything's a little up in the air. While things still seem on track for Thunderbird to join the OOo family, let's take a look at some of OpenOffice 3's upcoming new features outside of the information manager realm:

• PDF import and export - Could OpenOffice be an Acrobat killer as well?
• Office 2007 document and Vista support - Including better integration with the Vista OS.
• Improved charts and formula solving - Spreadsheet work has never been a high point of OpenOffice, but this should help.
• Better presentation system - Including support for running multiple screens during a slide show. 

Not familiar with OpenOffice? Check it out by downloading and installing it here. (Remember, it's free; you've got nothing to lose.) You might also try Lotus Symphony, which I wrote about earlier.

Finally, if you want to try Thunderbird now to see what you might be missing, you can download it here. I'd especially love to hear from Outlook users who give it a go; let us know what you see as the pros and cons.

LINK: OpenOffice 3.0 Wants to Compete with Outlook