The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that the public beta release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This beta release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage.
The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new "Start Centre", new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features. Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.
The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new "Start Centre", new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features. Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.
Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).
OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.
















Mac screen shots don't give me the horn, sorry.
Anyways, without the quick start service thingy, it opens slow, although faster than previous versions.
For being free, it's great. However, I'll stick to the superior Microsoft Office for now.
People are bitching over it, so I dont think it can be considered superior.
And as for the $400+ cost vs $0 free cost? Well, I think we have a winner.
People are bitching over it, so I dont think it can be considered superior.
And as for the $400+ cost vs $0 free cost? Well, I think we have a winner.
Try using the ribbon for a week and you'll like it. Everyone who I gave a copy of 2007 loved it, because everything was so much easier. New file format won't be a problem since there are already updates for your old Office version, and more and more people start having 2007 themselves.
One reason why I personally don't like OpenOffice is because it doesn't use the ribbon. After the three or four years I've been using it now I couldn't possibly have anything without.
your dumb, its the worst. previously with 2003 the customer got a disk with their oem version. now we're forced to install it and support it for the customer. i hate microsoft
I've worked with many companies that only plop down the money for Office just to get the latest Outlook.
Suggest OpenOffice to some corporations and you'd end up with people laughing in your face.
Outlook is a moot point with Exchange web access.
Well, at least that's what I've heard.
Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning are the perfect team for managing your emails, appointments and tasks.
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