OpenOffice.org 3.0

So the day we have been waiting for has finally come! OpenOffice.org 3.0 was just released this week, taking down their website with a staggering number of hits. Having jumped into the picture and downloaded the Linux, Mac, and Windows versions to deploy in my very diverse home lab, I can say that OpenOffice has provided the much-anticipated 3.0 release right on target. The most useful feature for me is the compatibility with the Office Open XML format, used in Microsoft's Office 2007 & 2008. While Extensions were also noted as a major feature of this new release, I have yet to experience them to their full potential, either as a user or as a developer.

One interesting comment concerning OpenOffice, and also along the lines of the poverty discussion that I posted yesterday, is its adoption by organizations in developing countries. The Brazilian government was among the first to adopt OpenOffice as its document productivity standard, making the switch to OpenOffice (Banco do Brasil: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/05/30/1662778.htm; Government: http://www.datamanager.it/articoli.php?visibile=1&idricercato=17447). This is another aspect of computing that benefits the developing world, enabling these countries and societies to, for the cost of education on how to use the software, participate in the sharing of information, both from the receiving and the sending ends of the communication process.

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)