OpenOffice 3 Released - Demand Crashes Site

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	14th Oct 2008

OpenOffice 3 Released - Demand Crashes Site

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OpenOffice may not have got the headlines it deserves in the past, but that suddenly looks to have changed...

With today's release of OpenOffice 3, developer Sun Microsystems has seen download demand for the suite reach such levels it has been forced to run a stripped down site to avoid the thing going under. Consequently all that currently remains of openoffice.org is a text only page with download links (it's tough being popular).

This popularity is looking deserved too with OpenOffice 3 running on Windows, Linux RPM, Linux DEB, Solaris x86, Solaris SPARC and Intel based Mac OS X Mac OSX PPC OSes making it the most platform friendly office suite out there.

So what do we get this time around? In truth the benefits are more centred around improving functionality than beautification (traditionally the way with 'OOo') and to this end the suite takes a major step forward with a newbie-friendly smart start page (pictured) and crucially full support for Microsoft Office's new xml based file formats including docx, xlsx and pptx. Other notable highlights include Writer's ability to now display multiple pages at once (great for larger monitors) while the Calc spreadsheet has seen its 256 column limit expanded to over 1,000 and there are improved network collaboration tools as well.

Meanwhile OpenOffice's famed high speed, low impact performance is claimed to be better than ever.

So in this you-call-it-credit-crunch-I-call-it-economic-crisis-let's-call-the-whole-thing-a recession-off head on over and save yourselves a large wad of cash...

Update: You'll still however being greeted with this...