Open Office 3.0 released

Open Office, the cross platform, open source, office application suit has reached its 3rd major release with the version 3.0. In recent years more and more users and companies jump ship from Microsoft Office to its free open source equivalent and that is not a coincidence. With each new version Open Office adds more functionality, more flexibility and becomes a serious threat for Microsoft's monopoly on office applications retaining close to 20% of the small and medium business market. Originally derived from Sun's Star Office suit, since 2000 has steadily evolved to a user favorite and the small company's free alternative to expensive office software. Its latest release offers even more features and provides better compatibility with its commercial cousin.

The new release features the usual office suit suspects as it core applications with

• Writer (Word processor)
• Calc (Spreadsheets)
• Impress ( Slides)
• Draw (Image and Digram sketching)
• Base (Relational database manipulation)

This release is available for the Mac platform with native interface without the use of X11. Neo Office users might want to check it out. Another important feature is the ability to edit and save Microsoft 2007 documents as well as Microsoft 2008 Mac documents. The new version is fully compatible with Visual Basic and Access 2007 formats. In addition, users can now create and save document in XHTML and MediaWiki formats. Third party addons offer the ability to import PDF documents for editing.


Open source community has done it again. It provided us with an exceptional tool for home and office use. Be sure to check it out. If you have been an Open Office user you know what you wanted to see from your favorite office suit. If you are new to the world of open source software you will be amazed. Whatever your user group is, you are in for a treat.