A new version of OpenOffice has been released, bringing the popular open source Microsoft Office alternative to version 3.0.0. The official site is completely hosed as everyone in the world, it seems, is trying to download it, but we've got mirrors of the new version up now: Windows, Windows with JRE, Mac OS X, Linux and Linux with JRE.

Start using it! Make the switch to an open document format and do your part do reduce the world's dependency on fossil software.

As if anyone actually saves their documents as .odt though?

i think ill pass thanks

I use it on all my business machines now. No real complaints, just some annoyances.

As if anyone actually saves their documents as .odt though?

I do. Anything I need to share with other people, I send as PDF.

and if they want to edit....

and thennn

does this version make it not suck?

While I love FOSS, I hate to break this to you all, but the chances of my company (probably 6-7 thousand Office users) changing to OpenOffice are nil (and I believe this is true for most large businesses).

I'm not commenting on the quality of the software, but as we prepare to roll out Office 2007 (which I really like, I might add), OpenSource just doesn't even get a mention...


last edited by mongie at 08:50:05 14/Oct/08

Yeah same here Mongie, which is pretty funny. They are prepaired to pay out the Wazoo for MS-Office, but wouldn't even concider using something different.
It's in the 'Too Hard' basket.

Which is fair enough, even visual changes seem to stump alot of the older generations, so the cost involved in getting everyone to be able to use OpenOffice (and the lost revenue in time spent learning instead of working) seems to be a significant factor.

Just like trying to get my mum to use Firefox. Although it might not seem all that diferent to you or I, she had a lot of trouble simply navigating around. (I had even setup her bookmarks to be exactally the same etc) so She's back to using IE now.

I use OpenOffice on my home machine.

yer, im with the boys:

i get enough issues receiving data/layouts with ms products, let alone adding to the problem by introducing new (and exciting) issues using OO:

Which is fair enough, even visual changes seem to stump alot of the older generations, so the cost involved in getting everyone to be able to use OpenOffice (and the lost revenue in time spent learning instead of working) seems to be a significant factor.

I don't know, I'd argue that Office 2007 would be harder to train people in than OpenOffice - for basic features I mean. I had trouble finding s*** in the Office 2007 ribbon layout. If I did, then other people in less technically-oriented positions will be going through hell.

But I guess one of the main issues is file format compatibility, everyone is used to working with and distributing genuine Word documents - you don't want to end up sending a .doc file to a client with broken formatting - which rules OpenOffice out in the workplace, regardless of features or merit.

Anyway I use Office for uni/work, OpenOffice at home. I really like OO Calc!


last edited by parabol at 09:42:04 14/Oct/08

I still have OO installed on my PC so I can recover f***ed MS Word docs that *MS Word* refuses open. But sadly, that's about the extend I use OO for.. like 90% of people in the world I'm also MS office slave.

The official site is completely hosed as everyone in the world, it seems, is trying to download it

I guess somebody must be using it. I did give it a go a while back, but it was like going back in time to MS Office 4.3.

I had trouble finding s*** in the Office 2007 ribbon layout. If I did, then other people in less technically-oriented positions will be going through hell.

Being tech savvy or not, if you are very familiar with an interface then a major change will always be jarring. No amount of being an advanced computer user will soften you from "where the f*** is the tables menu" problems.

We implemented a ribbon interface in an application we wrote this year for a financial company. The users found it very easy to work with - without having used Office 2007.

The ribbon UI paradigm seemed to work quite well to introduce new users to the software's functionality, the ribbon bar appeared to make the common operations obvious. We spent a lot less time training people than expected - the only time we had to answer "how do I do this" questions was when the command was sitting inside a menu off the app button.

last edited by Hogfather at 10:04:43 14/Oct/08

and if they want to edit....

Clients dont edit documents, they read them.


The "broken formatting" thing applies to Word just as much as it does in OpenOffice. If you want people to see document the way you wanted it to look, the only sane option is PDF.

Yeh I PDF everything I send out to clients. I don't want it editable in most cases.

Office software is just such an in-depth program that people try their best to get to know in great detail so they can be more productive.

To change to new software and lose some functionality is a big deal. Not the same as changing browsers (much to my disappointment, as I love opensource and really gave OpenOffice a big run at home).

I think I remember parabol always saying in these debates that for uni a change in format f***s everything up. Uni use is like 95% of my usage of office. For me, no reason to have this software for the other 5%.

Office 2007 is probably the first piece of software from microsoft I actually really really like. The 75 academic version offer they had going was the sealer.

I agree, Office 2007 is a good piece of software, and while I'm worried about users picking up the new ui, We do have some external training organised so that they can make the transition, and I'm sure everyone will be happy in the end.

I should also mention another reason why OO would be unsuitable for my situation - plugins. Our accountants use so many bloody addons and plugins for Word, Excel etc. that they'd be lost without them in OO. That and the fact that our main auditing software is designed to package multiple word / excel / pdf documents together, and I'm not sure how it would go with OO - plus, its a global application.

ARGH, just thinking about the issues associated with changing to OO is giving me nightmares.

last edited by mongie at 10:51:26 14/Oct/08

I'd stop thinking about it if I were you...

I know where you work mantrap. I still have your card... don't think I can't hunt you down!

Whatcha gunna do, recommend me a printer in a feisty manner?!?!

Pfft, he will be sending fatagrams!

Office 2007 Professional through the home use program ftw ($37 I think?).

I found the training stuff MS setup pretty adequate, was up and running in no time (some minor hassles):

Excel 2003 - 2007
Outlook 2003 - 2007
Word 2003 - 2007

MS office is simple to expensive for it to continue in some companies. The annual software budget at our work is a continuing fight with the finance director. Mainly cos he loves to issue across the board budget cuts.

Anyways I quite like OO, its my preference at work and home. Both of which I have licenced legal copies of office 2k3 and 2k7

Haha @ your avatar Obes. I actually found a shirt with that logo on it over the weekend. Will make me a packet on Ebay I'm sure

I still have one too, it's my mowing shirt :D

Sacrilegious mantra!

While I love FOSS, I hate to break this to you all, but the chances of my company (probably 6-7 thousand Office users) changing to OpenOffice are nil (and I believe this is true for most large businesses).

I guess it depends what your internal/external ratio is of document moving.

I dunno what licensing is like in that sort of volume but it must still be a couple hundred bucks a head, right?

My impression is that a lot of the traction that MS Office has in large companies is VBA

Well volume licensing is less then that for us. Around 20grand a year I believe.

And as for the VBA, its unfortunate that the only near100% VBA converter is in a paid version of Open Office.

While I do use NeoOffice (Mac natice OpenOffice) at home, and have it installed on my work system so I can edit the files I've saved into my Dropbox, I still fail to see it as being good enough for an office environment.

One of the FOSS evangelists here I spotted struggling with Evernote the other day, I just shook my head in pity at his bulls*** reasons for not using OneNote instead.

I gave openoffice an honest shot recently, I tried to work through all the problems, in the end it became just too hard to do basic things regarding formatting and layout, and the compatibility was horrible when moved to ms office. It's all stuff you can fix - but if you used office in the first place you wouldn't need to fix it. They also called stuff the wrong thing, like when you want to make text 'normal' in open office it's not called 'normal' its called 'text body', and 'font' is called 'character' - little things like that can become really frustrating!

I tried the same with GIMP, had a much worse time with that. Anyone who tells you GIMP does what Photoshop does is lying. It doesn't even have the arrow tool. You know the main tool that you use to click on stuff. ???