PanNotes

If you are looking for an alternative to the expensive and bloated Microsoft Office package you can now download the much improved free and just about as bloated OpenOffice.org 3. Mac OS X users should feel more at home with the new OpenOffice.org since it now has native support for the OS X user interface.

I use OpenOffice.org on a daily basis and it is good enough for my use but I am pretty sure it is not for everyone. While its support for reading and writing Microsoft’s file formats increase with each release it will always be a little behind. The current release can read the Microsoft 2007 file format but not write it.

I use OpenOffice.org mainly to read files from clients and create very basic Word and Excel documents. If you plan on working mainly with the Open Document Format then OpenOffice.org should be more than perfect for you. It’s a pity more organisations don’t standardise on this format. I would love if this was the case and most organisations and individuals would not feel the need to purchase or pirate a copy of MS Office.

I sincerely hope more people become aware of OOo so we can lessen the grip MS Office has on the office suite market. OpenOffice.org could do to this space what Firefox did for browsers but I don’t think it’s there yet.

Have a look at the new list of featrues.

Update: One feature that I am really glad to see is the editing of PDFs, this will be especially useful.

Also, the site seems to be taking a beating from the onslaught of downloads so here’s a mirror.