OpenOffice 3.0 Open Source Office Suite
OpenOffice.org, with Sun Microsystems as it's primary sponsor and code contributor and with IBM, RedHat, Google and over 400,000 people around the world adding more, has delivered an office suite with everything you would expect with OpenOffice 3. This amazing open source project runs on all major platforms including support for Mac OS X in this latest rendition. A filter for reading the problematic Word 2007 file format is also included as well as the Office 2008 for Mac files. And, as with previous versions, it is FREE!
To appreciate this office suite you have to understand the project's mission statement which is
"To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format."
The essence of this is that the file format is non-proprietary [XML file format] and can be read or written to without a particular vendor's application. And it is this particular feature which is increasingly becoming a requirement by governments and organizations world wide for adopting an application. This caries throughout the suite's word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database and minor applications. A thorough introduction is available at the OpenOffice Product Description page.
A minor inconvenience in previous versions of the suite was the fact you had to manually remove them separately. With v3 it is a one step process where you can elect to remove prior instances as part of the installation. Simply download the compressed installation file from the OpenOffice site and follow the instructions.
As with other open source project such as Mozilla Firefox, users and members of the development community are always glad to help in a variety of forums. Also common is the growing number of ad-ons which you will find at the Repository for Extensions. For the most part the look and feel is what you would experience with any office suite. What you will miss, should you decide to try it, is paying some $400 for a comparable Microsoft Product.
