News - OpenOffice.org launches release candidate 4 prior to next week's 3.0 launch

[HEXUS]

With six days to go until the launch of OpenOffice.org 3.0, the fourth-and-possibly-final release candidate is available to download.

Read more.

[mycarsavw]

day apostrophe s - oh no you didn't

[quatermass]

The trouble with OO is that when I open a Word 2003 document in OO it goes from say 28 pages to 33.

Until OO solves this spacing problem, companies just won't use it.

[Starclopsofish]

Acually, a market research company I do work for just made the switch over to OO.o. The few caveats of using OpenOffice are FAR overshadowed by the horrors of MS Office. They are now requiring companies they deal with to use the .odt format.

[quatermass]

The trouble is with companies already using MSOffice is that they build up a large amount of archived material. If they look at it in OO they see a mess. If it didn't then perhaps they wouldn't be put off by it?

When we trialled OO it failed because of this.

Yes the company rather buy more licenses of Office and continue to use it than simply reformat the old documents.

It's political and social reasons not technical ones which keep people from adopting OO.

[mycarsavw]

quatermass - spot on there.

We began with WordPerfect, moved to Office 97 for many many years and when we finally had the finances to upgrade the network we moved initially to OpenOffice.

After two weeks of messing around with spacing, formatting and printing errors I had to go out and buy the bloatware that is Office Pro 2007.

I use OO at home, my children use it too, trouble free, but they were/are young enough not to have used MS Office for XX years.

[staffsMike]

I made the move to OO last year. I was really impressed with it then and grow ever more so. Obviously the formatting isn't perfect when opening word files but it's a small price to pay..when you don't pay anything at all

I know my old company wouldn't dream of using it though. Bunch of old duffers who can barely find their way around word after ** (*** ) years. The non existent IT staff also fear change.