“I’ve long been an admirer of OpenOffice.org, the free, open-source office suite that’s a serious alternative to pricey products such as Microsoft Office. It strikes me as a no-brainer to at least try it when you’re in the market for an updated productivity suite, because it costs you nothing but your time,” Dwight Silverman blogs for The Houston Chronicle.
“I’m amazed when I run across people who are hesitant to give it a try, even when they’re just as hesitant to shell out big bucks for Microsoft’s product,” Silverman writes.
“To be clear: If you are considering buying a commercial office suite, don’t do it until you have given OpenOffice.org a shot. That’s particularly true of the new version, which was released today. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is a significant upgrade and, again, is completely free,” Silverman reports.
“The final version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is available at the main OpenOffice.org site. The are versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Unix users,” Silverman reports. “This is a particularly interesting release for Macintosh users. In the past, running OpenOffice.org on the Mac required use of a Unix shell called X11. This is the first version of the suite that runs natively on the Mac.”
“Version 3.0 can open dozens of document types, including the newer OpenXML formats used by Office 2007 in Windows and Office 2008 on the Mac, such as .docx from Word. However, while OpenOffice.org 3.0 can read these formats, it can’t write to them. Instead, it can save to the previous Office formats, such as the older Word’s .doc. This makes it a great choice for opening Office 2007/2007 documents that may be sent to you, even if you don’t have Microsoft’s newer suite,” Silverman reports.
“However, Mac users should note that OpenOffice.org 3.0 won’t open or write documents generated by Apple’s iWork Suite. It’s one of the few common formats not supported here,” Silverman reports.
Full article here.
More info and download links for OpenOffice.org 3.0 here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
Of course, if you pay for iWork, then you make really gorgeous stuff that looks like it took five graphic designers two months to do… when it really only took you ten minutes. iKnow a better way…
What does this have to do with American politics?
I tried the 2.0 beta a few years back and it was sluggish but looked like it had serious potential. I’m really curious how this version will perform.
In the meantime, I’m really starting to like the word processing mode in Pages.
@NuBus
Nice one!
There is free software everywhere. Why do people pay for it? PC users are idiots I guess.
I’ve been using OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta for a while now. I prefer it over NeoOffice. Both are sluggish however, but that is because they are powerful, full-featured office suites.
I suggest that you get iWork with OpenOffice just in case. For my day-to-day work, iWork fulfills all my needs.
NuBus,
Uh oh! You dropped the puck like Sarah Palin did at the Flyer’s game Saturday night. Now, skate away (to where the puck is going to be, of course) and watch the flaming begin.
It’s NeoOffice for Me! I like their dedication to the Mac! Saves to .docx too.
This version is so much better than any that have been around previously in that it is native, and a lot faster.
On the other hand, I don’t know why they insist on blending all the programs together. If I want to do a spreadsheet, I just open Numbers. I don’t want or need to open a monolithic Office suite with a ton of stuff that I don’t want and just gets in my way. MS Office and most every other office suite is the same in this regard.
Especially annoying is that if you are not a businessman or woman, you hardly ever need to do a presentation, and presentation software sucks up resources like there is no tomorrow.
As a writer and an artist, what I need is a tightly focussed word processor that’s fast, lean but also extensible and a similar product for creating images. I’ve been computing since computers were first available to the public and rarely have I seen product’s that approach this, if ever.
The closest match’s might be Word 5.0 for Dos and Photoshop 3.0 for Mac. Since then however, both products have been completely ruined by “Suite-itis.”
@ Cubert:
Nice working-in of the oh-so-fresh “where the puck…” aphorism.
Although there are several good alternatives to the productivity applications in MS Office – NeoOffice, iWork and now OpenOffice – what is still missing is a solid replacement for Entourage.
Basically, I am still using Office for Mac because there is no good alternative to Entourage that offers me the Microsoft application’s relatively elegant integration of mail, contacts and calendar. Ideally, it would use the same data files that the Apple applications use, at least for the contacts and calendar info, so it would sync through MobileMe.
If a Mac-devoted developer would create such an app and price it fairly – say, $49 for single-license and then some kind of family or small office package – I would buy it in a heartbeat, and then dump MS Office forever.
Alas, nobody apparently sees this opportunity…
Sorry, this junk is incompatible with the world. When you fanboys grow up and get a job with a real company, you’ll find that out.
No iWork, No Open Office, No Neo Office in the big boy world. I still use Mac Office 2004 as my company hasn’t approved (thank God) 2008 as of yet….
It’s nice that you little fanboys like to raw raw Apple, raw raw Steve, but someday when Mommy and Daddy isn’t buying your computers – you need to be compatible with the rest of the world, and “Open Office” is garbage – as well is the rest of the “Off Brand” Office Suites…
@Worker
As “procurer” of office productivity software for a small (75-100 employee) but profitable business, I can tell you that we’re interested in OpenOffice, both for Windows and for Mac.
We aren’t upgrading to Vista, either. And when they stop selling XP, that’s when we’ll start transitioning our Windows user base to Linux and Mac boxes.
Anything to break the MS fear and intimidation stranglehold.
Dump the Republicans and Dump Microsoft.
Obama and Apple in ’08.
Nubus: “What does this have to do with American politics?”
There, fixed that for you.
Dump the Republicans and Dump Microsoft.
Obama and Apple in ’08.
We let the kids in our school have access to MS Office 2008 (everyone hates it and wants 2004 back), OpenOffice 3 (they have been using the beta without any crashes) and iWork ’08.
iWork+OpenOffice gives them the “Micro$oft Office” look and feel, gives excellent MSOffice file conversion and iWork lets them make really good looking documents. That way they become ready for what any office throws at them.
The other advantage is that OpenOffice is free and so they can have the same software at home without having to resort to shelling out more money or nicking the disk from work.
I just downloaded OpenOffice for OS X and discovered that the word processor does not display the Symbol font at all, making it totally useless for me. (Unlike NeoOffice, which just doesn’t display the Symbol font in italics.) I couldn’t find anywhere to report bugs or get support, so I’m mentioning it here. That’s a shame, as I really want an alternative to MS Office.
“It’s nice that you little fanboys like to raw raw Apple, raw raw Steve, but someday when Mommy and Daddy isn’t buying your computers – you need to be compatible with the rest of the world, and “Open Office” is garbage – as well is the rest of the “Off Brand” Office Suites…”
gosh what insightful and biting commentary. we all feel bad now….
if you will excuse me i have to go speak to my accountant about the almost seven figures of income i have tied up in the market right now. i need to pull some out so that my parents can move into the guest house when they retire, you see we would like to rebuild it so that there is a covered walkway to the indoor pool.
i have to download this new OO.org suite to send him some documents, you see he only accepts clients over a certain amount, he really is good enough to be choosey, but he refuses to use MS products, so i thought he would get a kick out of my using the 3.0 for these files.
BTW, your teacher is coming, you better get back to your assignment and stop surfing sites while in class.
note that OpenOffice 3.0 is only compatible with Intel Macs at this time. If you have an older PowerMac, then you’d have to make do with the older, more sluggish version 2.X. In that case, I’d strongly advise using Apple’s iWork instead.
iWork. Pages is one of the most underestimated apps out there.
I’ve designed hundreds of pages in Adobe’s InDesign, and I’ve written thousands in Word, and iWork’s Pages just puts them both to shame. It’s faster, smarter, lighter.
Still, it’s nice to see that OOo finally released a native Mac version.
@bon and oh no my shorts.
You’re not in publishing are you? Publishers need indesign or quark. You’re not in finance either because I need Excel macro’s.
I use Neo Office and iWork but had to buy XP and MS Office to run Excel models which use macro’s.
Despite my wish to be rid of MS sh*tware I cannot do so yet because Excel is a truly excellent app, at least in the 2k and 2003 iterations. When a company out Excels Excel and makes it backwards compatiblle, then perhaps I will take a look. It will never happen, not in the next 20 years anyway. Until then I have to run MS Office in a VM.
@ John B,
I downloaded OpenOffice for OS X just now, and the word processor displays the symbol font just fine–even in italics.
Character Palette also works with it just fine, as does Insert Special Character.
@ worker:
All this macho crap is like the people at work who call people cissys for wanting protective clothing when handling hazardous substances. MS isn’t for grown-up, it’s for drones.
@AWidgetHaveNot
Yep, I’m in publishing, and I can tell you that it’s absolutely a myth that you need InDesign or Quark. I can’t remember the last time I opened ID. I’ve been doing most everything in Pages and exporting to PDF (using some pro print settings that I set up in OS X’s ColorSync app.)
*Much* more efficient than bloated InDesign.
@worker is the only one “raw raw”-ing in this post, far as I can tell. Bet he builds his own Macs, too; after all, “big boys” don’t need no wussy-fied pretty computers, do they?
@AWidgetIHaveNot
Commercial printing. We run CS3 and Quark (bletch) on both Macs and Win. We could happily do so Mac-only.
Replacing Excel is a problem, that’s a good observation.
We can only hope that increased demand for a non-MS solution will entice someone to step up and deliver.