OpenOffice.org 3 is here!

OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that keeps many of us from having to shell out so much dough for Microsoft Office (or have to run it under WINE) released version 3 of their software on Monday. I would have blogged it sooner (before Wednesday) but I had been having some issues with the spreadsheet component in the beta versions, but once I got the final version everything works like a champ.

The changes are obvious even from the moment the splash screen pops up, and there are also a new start screen, new icons, and a boatload of improvements. Among them are

• A new slider tool for zooming in the Writer word processor. Writer also has multi-page display when editing, better multilingual support, improved notes and can even handle editing wiki documents for the Wide Wide World of Web.
• The Calc spreadsheet can now handle up to 1024 columns per sheet, and it also has a new equation solver and new collaboration tools.
• Draw accepts poster-size graphics up to 3 square meters.
• The Impress presentation editor finally supports multiple monitors, making it an even better replacement for PowerPoint.
• Chart has cleaner looking graphics by default, and the requests from power users have been granted with some of their most demanded features being included.
• The built-in PDF exporter now supports PDF/A and has even more user-selectable options.

I’ve been using Writer to work on some software documentation and it’s even easier to use than the previous version, and while I hadn’t been able to work on a spreadsheet while beta testing OOo3 I can now say that it was definitely worth waiting for, not just in the better graphics but also in just plain being easier to use.

OSX users can rejoice in finally having OpenOffice.org as a native program, without having to run it in a compatibility mode. With Microsoft admitting that MS Office/Mac isn’t nearly as nice as it is for Windows users they may find they’re losing even more market share to the FOSS upstarts.

There are even more extensions available than version 2 had and I’m looking forward to taking some time to see what new and improved goodies are available.

You can read the official release announcement, release notes and a guide to all the new features, and you can download the latest version for yourself.

Tombuntu has info on how to install it in Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid, but it won’t be available by default in Ubuntu Intrepid. Granted, if you follow Tom’s innstructions you’ll still have to create launchers for OOo 3, but if you uninstall the older version of OpenOffice.org (Tom shows you how) you can install the Desktop Integraton package included in the installer and it will create menu items for you.