Seems like just a month ago that Microsoft Office competitor OpenOffice.org trotted out version 2.4. Today the open-source office suite debuted its long-awaited 3.0 version (albeit in beta form), adding native support for Mac OS X, import filters for Office 2007, an updated interface, and countless other tweaks and improvements.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, OpenOffice delivers business-caliber word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and drawing (a la Visio). It’s nearly as feature-rich as Microsoft Office, and given that most users never touch the latter’s more advanced features anyway, it’s more than suitable for small and even medium-sized businesses.
Before version 3.0, Mac users had to use X11 to run OpenOffice. Now the suite “runs like any other Aqua application,” according to the developers.
As always, OpenOffice costs zero dollars. Before you spend big bucks on pricey Microsoft Office licenses, you should absolutely positively try the suite for a couple weeks and see if it meets your needs. Just keep in mind that version 3.0 is a beta, so it may yet have bugs and instability. [via AppScout]
