OpenOffice 3.0 (beta) Released

[engine]

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.

OpenOffice 3.0 (beta) Released [marketing.openoffice.org]

US English for MS-Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris platforms [download.openoffice.org...]

[Marcia]

Glad to hear it; the prior version has some serious bugs that need fixes. In light of that, I might just uninstall and take advantage of the new beta release regardless.

[grelmar]

...serious bugs that need fixes...

Curious: what bugs? I have never had any serious issues with it. Does it render things exactly the same as MS Word? No, and it never will. But I don't see that as a bug, per se, but more something along the lines of "no two browsers render a web page" exactly the same type of issue.

One of the key reasons I switched from MS Office to Open Office years ago, was the fact that OO was just more stable. Still is, as far as I can tell.

[Gomvents]

I switched only about 9 months ago (really wish I didn't spend all the money upgrading my office to Microsoft Office 2007!) While Microsoft Office 2007 was a huge improvement over 2003, the new layouts required a new learning curve and Outlook is still completely unstable, Excel takes forever to open, and other annoyances... Open Office was an easy enough transition and has been FAR more stable and I can get into the programs instantly. I plan on donating some money to the Open Office project each year. I kind of wish Sun tried harder to sell StarOffice with support as a Microsoft replacement, something that would give this project a little boost (although things are currently great there's a few features missing, spreadsheets are much harder to work with, i'm still too used to powerpoint etc.).

[Marcia]

BTW, now that it's been mentioned, what is the difference between Open Office and Star Office?

re: bugs in Open Office (Star Office - I truly can't tell one from the other), I haven't tried to use word processing, it's in the spreadsheet that bugs and/or anamolies have shown up. For one thing, you can't select a row, hold down the shift key and move the arrow key down to select multiple consecutive rows to copy and paste. That's critical to how I use a spreadsheet program, and it just hasn't worked.

[grelmar]

re: Bugs

I can see how that would be a workflow issue. I'm not a big spreadsheet user so I can't really speak to that.

I noticed in a Wired article that it's now native to OSX, which is good to see. In my world, if an app isn't cross-platform, it isn't useful.

Star Office v. OpenOffice - AFAIK, Star Office has some proprietary fonts and more templates, and a couple of add-ons. No huge difference in the back end.

[pageoneresults]

Ya know, these days, anything with the word "Open" in it really concerns me. Open to what? All the stuff that other Open Source software users are facing? Like those using WordPress right now that haven't upgraded? I know, I know, the same applies to MS.

I'm a Baby Boomer. I don't know anything else other than Microsoft. Why would I change?

[Brett_Tabke]

We use MS Office around the "office" for required file conversion and stuff, but Open Office is on almost every machine now. I just can't justify spending tens of thousands on MS Office while Open Office is free and open source.

[g1smd]

In 25 years of using computers, I have never owned any Microsoft "Office" related product.

[mil2k]

I just can't justify spending tens of thousands on MS Office while Open Office is free and open source.

Amen.

We have had users cribbing about switch from MS Office to Open Office.... but I am looking forward to this new version.

[grelmar]

I'm a Baby Boomer. I don't know anything else other than Microsoft. Why would I change?

1. Cost.

2. Cross Platform Compatibility.

3. While not inherently more secure, it's currently a smaller target than MS Office, which lowers its overall threat profile.

4. Getting away from vendor lock in. OpenOffice and StarOffice are both backed by Sun Microsystems, but there are actually a lot of other flavours of it being put out by different developpers.

5. Extensibility - Like Firefox and Thunderbird and Linux and other open source packages, if you find there's "that one thing" you really need as an add on, odds are some geek somewhere has come out with an extension to do that.

6. Plays nice with PDF. In fact, plays nice with far more file formats than MS Office does in general.

7. To repeat #1 - Cost.

[zafile]

I just went to the HP web site and got a quote for HP Pavilion a6430f Desktop PC.

The base price for a pretty robust box was about US$680.

Then I looked for Accessories and Supplies. I can get Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 for about $150.

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 comes with Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Note 2007.

Any executive is willing to pay $150 just to have in his-hers computer the latest version of PowerPoint.

I don't think the cost argument is strong enough to make the switch from MS Office to OpenOffice specially when this security thread is added into the equation [webmasterworld.com...] .

[stef25]

OO is great and makes Office look like a total waste of money. this version i have on my vista at work is just terrible and my company probably forked out 1000's of € to install it on 200 PC's. The only reason to have Office is so you can send out docs to clients in exactly the layout / format you want. what a waste!

[appi2]

Marcia

For one thing, you can't select a row, hold down the shift key and move the arrow key down to select multiple consecutive rows to copy and paste.

Maybe I've misunderstood the above but, you can. open office 2.4