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Thursday, May 8, 2008

Open Office 3.0 beta is out

Just saw this on the LWN site and this is pretty timely. If the thunder can be stolen from the OOXML ratification by the ISO and the ODF standard made more popular,it should make a dent somewhere.

The complete feature list is available on the Openoffice website and the only irritating thing is the line New, Fresh-looking Icons. I'd rather a stable, feature rich editor than "fresh" fancy icons on the screens. We've got that from one vendor whose product upgrades are more like new coats of paint hiding the rot within.

Why take that route at all?

To be honest, though I have Openoffice installed, I've fired it up around 10 times to read versions of Microsoft Office files that I receive rarely. Which is about all since I use LaTeX for typing out documents. Other family members don't notice the difference between the office suites that much, so it helps there.

I suppose these days, it's hard to get excited about Office suites when the majority have Microsoft Office suite as the default desktop tool. Pity, it could save them a whole bunch when they use just a fraction of the feature list.