OpenOffice 3.0

Way. Freakin’. Cool.

OpenOffice.org 3 is out. And so many people tried to download it that the main site crashed. Ain’t that cool? I mean, I’m sorry the site crashed, but it’s cool so many people are using it. I love OpenOffice. I use it for spreadsheets and documents, mostly. I’ve also used it to view and create PowerPoint files and database files. As a writer, I need a dependable, flexible, user-friendly data processing program. OpenOffice is all that and, better yet, it is FREE.

email from Louis Suarez-Potts, head of OO.o:

All,

We must apologize. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is proving immensely, staggeringly popular. And our site is down as a result. While we fix things, we urge you to be patient and try again later on tonight, tomorrow, this week. It will still be there.

Oh, by popular, we mean it: figure hundreds of thousands of users, mostly Windows users, but also Mac OS X and Linux and Solaris users, all trying to download it all at once…..

Cheers, and thanks for your patience,
Louis

What other folks are saying:

Google News list of articles

What OpenOffice site crash means

This is good news and bad news. The good news is we have more proof of the popularity of Open Office, which continues to seize market share from Microsoft Office and reduce the monopoly rents that company earns. The bad news is it will take some time, and some money, for the open source group to scale-up. I know they can speak for themselves, but it’s time that companies which benefit from OpenOffice step up to the plate. If you’re an enterprise standardizing on OpenOffice, or a company that competes fiercely with Microsoft, you have a stake in this. It’s time for you to step up and support OpenOffice. Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of the software.

OK, now OpenOffice is definitely good enough

OpenOffice.org is not a clone of Office 2007 (good call, Sun). It’s a full-featured suite that gives us everything we need from MS Office and the world of productivity software while keeping the bottom line quite a bit more reasonable (you don’t get any more reasonable than free). Yes, OO.org has been good enough for a long time; the latest release should leave little doubt for any users who had been on the fence.

PS I just tried to do the upgrade from OpenOffice itself and it can’t make a connection. I am currently downloading the huge 142.37M file. While the new modem is working great, Charter’s download speeds are not what they say they are. The download has yet to top 42Kb/sec.

Comments

  1. Yes! It can open .doc, .ppt, and others. It can save in those formats too, meaning you can then view/edit them in Word or PowerPoint. It also saves in its own formats which are not viewable/editable by other programs. I do all my work in their format and when I send something to someone, I either re-save it in .rtf or .doc or .txt. If it is an important thing, like a manuscript or story submission, I view it in Word before sending, just to make sure everything translated. Prior versions of OO.org had problems with notes and change tracking done in Word. When I had to work with an editor, I had to use Word. This new version is supposed to have fixed that.

    The one program, known as OpenOffice.org, is Calc (spreadsheet like Excel), Writer (Word), Math (er, does big mathematical equation writing stuff), Base (Access), Impress (Powerpoint), and Draw (er, design stuff).

    And it is free! And open source!

    I love this program. Reminds me, I downloaded the new version and never installed it. Duh.

Comments are closed.