OpenOffice 3

have often mentioned OpenOffice as an alternative office suite to Microsoft's Office. OpenOffice will allow you to open, edit, create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

I personally have been using OpenOffice for years now in a corporate environment, working with Word and Excel documents, which are in turned used by others. None are the wiser as to the fact that I am using OpenOffice.
And as I have always mentioned, one of the big differences between OpenOffice and Microsoft's Office, is that OpenOffice is absolutely free. 

OpenOffice has now come out with it's long-awaited 3.0 version! For Apple users this is great news as you now no longer have to use the Mac port of OpenOffice - NeoOffice. 

Having now upgraded to 3.0, I have noticed one great improvement. Prior to this version if you want to add any extras, it required doing a little manipulation of files, which would have prevented general users from enjoying them. Now OpenOffice has an Extension Manager. When you access the Extension Manager you are taken to a web page where you can browse through or search for various extras. The extras, or extensions, can then be installed by a mere click of the mouse. So, in my case, adding in the Russian language was a breeze!

Also the latest version of OpenOffice is supposed to be able to edit PDF's. I have not tried this functionality out yet, but this would be a wonderful tool if it works well.

I highly recommend giving OpenOffice 3.0 a try. For those of you already using OpenOffice (or NeoOffice for Apple users), then update to this latest version. 

You can get the latest version of OpenOffice at:
http://www.openoffice.org


NB. If you are an Apples user, you will need to uninstall (delete) NeoOffice after installing OpenOffice.