Linux Solutions

OpenOffice 3.0 – the alternative to Microsoft Office – was made available for download on Monday, and already the demand was high enough to Cuse their download servers to crash.

The software is essentially the same as Microsoft Office, handling spreadsheets, word and database tools, and the new 3.0 release comes packed with new extensions to allow a more customised experience fro users.

This latest release also gives Apple users something to sing about, as for the first time OpenOffice supports Mac OS as well as Linux and Windows.

“That opens up a whole new market for us,” John McCreesh, marketing project lead for OpenOffice.org, said.

The program looks far nicer now too. The start centre, splash screen, and icons have all been updated appearance-wise, but take a look under the hood to see the real changes.

The software’s word processing tool adds a new multi-page display mode that features a slider control, meaning you can zoom in and out while editing. OpenOffice now includes an in-built utility that allows users to edit web-based Wiki documents and expanded notes options. The spreadsheet column capacity has extended to 1,024, adds multi-user collaboration options, and improved equation solving.

These are just some of the updates, but what if you don’t want/need more columns on your spreadsheet; well you don’t have to have them.

“People complain about office suites getting bigger and bloated,” McCreesh commented.

“With extensions, we allow people to add on bits of functionality that are important to them.”

The key, the OpenOffice team believes, lies in the choice.

“For people who need [those features], they’re absolutely wonderful - but for people who don’t need them, then they’re not cluttering up their hard disk,” McCreesh pointed out.

Sounds good huh, but OpenOffice.org need to maintain their servers uptime. They’ve experimented with a few options to keep the site running, and want users to remain patient.

“It’s amazing - on the one hand, we’re delighted that we’ve gotten such a huge response. On the other hand, we’d much rather all these people were successfully downloading rather than crashing the site,” McCreesh said.

You must admit, this is a sign that open source software acceptance is on the rise, with Mozilla’s Firefox breaking download records, and now this.

“It’s an unprecedented response,” McCreesh admitted. “We’ve never seen anything like it.”