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ANDY MIN
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Member Since: 4/2006Last Seen: 11/04/2009
Member Since: 4/2006Last Seen: 11/04/2009
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Just in time for its (and my) birthday, OpenOffice.org 3.0 was officially released today, after several builds had been found on the FTP sites several weeks before.
The open source community greeted the OpenOffice.org release like they do most others: they crashed the site, forcing Sun to throw up a temporary download-only splash page. The mirrors are also crashed, with many download speeds in the kilobyte range. Luckily, there's a great press release detailing all the important stuff that you need to know while you're waiting.
What's new (the important stuff)
The press release notes several new changes. Arguably, the biggest one (and the one highlighted the most in the press release) is native Mac OS X support, potentially eliminating the need for NeoOffice at all. No more is X11 needed; Mac OpenOffice.org users can now run their favorite office suite with full Cocoa and Aqua support. Many have rejoiced over the news, including Leo Laporte, MacNN, and CrunchGear.
Another big upgrade is the new extension repository. While extensions were always supported, 3.0 marks the first time Sun has actually pushed them towards the community, similar to Mozilla's Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird add-ons. Part of the reason Firefox is so popular is that it has so many add-ons available, many performing invaluable tasks not found in other browsers (Greasemonkey, SiteAdvisor, Stylish, and AdblockPlus are just a few examples). Right now, I could care less what word processor I use. With OpenOffice.org extensions on the rise in 3.0, that might all change.
The last major upgrade is better support for file formats. OOXML, Microsoft's proprietary new format in Office 2007 (.docx, .xlsx, and .pptx), is finally supported, as is Access' .aacdb. "Improved support" for VBA macros is also available in the latest release. Additionally, you can now edit PDF and MediaWiki documents using OpenOffice.org's great word processor. As the marketing project co-leader noted, "it's even easier to make the change away from legacy MS Office software".
What's new (the not so important, but still nice-to-know, stuff)
The release also has several other interesting things of note. OpenOffice.org's zoom tool has finally been upgraded (officially, a "new slider control for zooming which allows multi-page display while editing". In reality, a 21st Century zooming tool). Notes capabilities are also a powerful new feature. Outside of the word processor, Calc (the spreadsheet Excel-like program) now sports up to 1024 columns per sheets and comes with a great new collaboration feature. Additionally, OpenOffice.org claims to sport a "new way of supporting additional languages", making monolingualism a thing of the past.
Conclusion
OpenOffice.org's release will definitely positively impact the open source community. With all the new features, native support for OS X, and full file format support, Microsoft better look over its shoulder.
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6.8
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{"commentId":3465295,"authorDomain":"thevineofhob"}
Is it faster?
Right now I use NeoOffice as my primary desktop office suite, but I cringe every time I have to open it because its so freakn slow. And I have a pretty damn new Mac Book Pro too. I usually just use Google Docs because as any webpage, it loads in an instant and doesn't hog my computer's resources.
{"commentId":3465295,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"thevineofhob"}
- 3 votes
#1 - Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:08 PM EDT{"commentId":3465627,"authorDomain":"onlineapps"}
{"commentId":3467318,"authorDomain":"danielandrews"}
Gave it a spin today on my 6 month old Macbook Pro with 4gb of RAM. Still dog slow. But nobody can dispute it's a great, free, functional office suite. It just doesn't get enough love on the Mac.
Baby steps, I suppose.
{"commentId":3467318,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"danielandrews"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":3469049,"authorDomain":"thevineofhob"}
Hey Daniel, any chance you've used any of the Apple suite, like pages? Are they faster? They might just be worth the purchase if they didn't take a minute to load.
{"commentId":3469049,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"thevineofhob"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":3469492,"authorDomain":"danielandrews"}
I generally use the iWork stuff and yes, it's orders of magnitude faster.
{"commentId":3469492,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"danielandrews"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":3471654,"authorDomain":"spiffie"}
I typically use iWork stuff, too. I would warn that Numbers is still very much a 1.something release in the speed department on large spreadsheets. I'm sure they're working on it. At the moment Numbers doesn't really hold a candle to Excel for anything beyond relatively simple tasks (and charts; Numbers has some beautiful charting designs, even if not as many options as Excel).
{"commentId":3471654,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"spiffie"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":3465618,"authorDomain":"belarius"}
Huzzah!
{"commentId":3465618,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"belarius"}
- 2 votes
#2 - Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:27 PM EDT{"commentId":3468831,"authorDomain":"MinnieApolis"}
Thanks for the update. I have OpenOffice now, having recently made at least a partial switch to OO for docs that have to interact with Word. Am able to open and readprint/copy even Word 2007 with it. It still doesn't feel quite like home to me, but give me a little more time.
{"commentId":3468831,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"MinnieApolis"}
- 2 votes
#3 - Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:30 PM EDT{"commentId":3469349,"authorDomain":"yasmin"}
Ugh, does anyone have a Windows torrent link for it? I've been waiting ages for this, and the site is down! So not cool. On the other hand, it's great that it's so popular.
{"commentId":3469349,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"yasmin"}
- 1 vote
#4 - Mon Oct 13, 2008 10:16 PM EDT{"commentId":3488979,"authorDomain":"thecivicvoice"}
In the future, I'd check out www.filehippo.com. I got it there when their website was down yesterday or the day before.
{"commentId":3488979,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"thecivicvoice"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":3471674,"authorDomain":"spiffie"}
I haven't been following the development of OO. I notice that Mac OO 3.0 appears to be Intel-only at this point. Is that the end of it, or is there a PPC version coming? (Yes, some of us are still using PPC computers!)
{"commentId":3471674,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"spiffie"}
- 2 votes
#5 - Tue Oct 14, 2008 2:06 AM EDT{"commentId":3489776,"authorDomain":"janeway77"}
I intend to use Open Office 3 heavily. I am very unhappy with Microsoft Office, and think that Microsoft has taken a good product, and totally trashed it with "upgrades" throughout the years. I think Microsoft has become committed to "selling something new" every couple of years instead of bettering their product.
My solution? I don't see myself buying a Microsoft product again. Ever.
{"commentId":3489776,"threadId":"387476","contentId":"1992544","authorDomain":"janeway77"}
- 2 votes
#6 - Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:07 AM EDT{"canLink":false,"threadId":"387476","isPrivate":false}
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