Labs report : Office rival raises its game

The OpenOffice.org project has released its first beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0, the next version of its free-to-download office application suite. New features include native Mac OS X support and the ability to read Microsoft Office 2007 documents.

The final version is due in September, and is expected to support version 1.2 of the Oasis OpenDocument Format standard. Users will also be able to open files created in both Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version of the suite capable of running natively on OS X without the need for users to install the X11 networking and display protocol.
We installed build BEA300_m2 of the beta on several desktops and laptops variously running Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business and several Linux distributions, including OpenSuse 10.3 and Ubuntu 8.

On Windows XP, the install takes under five minutes and the first thing users will notice is the presence of a Start Centre, allowing them to directly open new documents for the word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, or drawing applications, as well as templates or existing documents.

On both Windows and Linux systems, the applications seemed stable and we experienced no major problems. We found we could open documents created with Word, Excel and PowerPoint in Microsoft Office 2007 with no discernible visual difference in formatting.

A new collaboration feature available in version 3.0 is the ability to share spreadsheets, as in Excel. We found this feature simple to use, and documents were easy to save when being accessed from two different systems. In the event that there are conflicting changes in a shared spreadsheet, the user who opened the document initially has the authority to resolve the conflict.

OpenOffice.org has also responded to requests for custom error bars to be shown whenever users are displaying graphs in the spreadsheet. These can also display regression equations and associated correlation coefficients.

Other changes include a feature in Writer that displays notes on the side of the document, and the ability to view multiple pages in a document while editing.

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