OpenOffice.org 3.1 Available At A Server Near You

@johnsmith1234: 3.0 was a major improvement, at least on Mac OS X. It launches in about 3 seconds on my 3-year-old iMac. Still uses a lot of RAM, but it's pretty zippy.

I just upgraded, and I'm already a big fan of the zoom slider for Calc and the better grammar support in Writer. The other features sound good too, but I haven't really used them heavily yet.

forpeterssake

Is it still a disgusting bloated mess? Last I checked Open Office was still using 100MB of RAM, taking 45 seconds to load. Then additional time (and RAM!) to load the document. Not to mention even after filling 100MB of RAM, it is STILL laggy when you click menu items. Is it still terribly unstable?

The Mac version isn't available yet. My guess is that they're waiting until it is before they officially release it.

Yay! I wonder if they've fixed the thesaurus yet. I've had to use it a couple of times when I was offline and it was... what's another word for 'lacking'?

Wit is periodically disensouled

Looking forward to the anti-aliased drawing. The blocky edges have always kind of bothered me, even though this *is* office software, not photo-editing software.

@Wit is periodically disensouled: Ha!

nefnet13

@johnsmith1234: I also have version OpenOffice 3.0 running on several Mac computers in my work, and home environment. It is very snappy, opening in just seconds. Currently, it is taking 55MB of RAM with both "Writer" and "Spreadsheets" open. That is a lot better than Microsoft Office's software...

Nytmare10

Is it no longer embarrassing to be using this on a Mac? Because unless it's stopped, I'm sticking with NeoOfice.

Bug fixes simply will not be convincing enough for me to install OO into my hard drive

I'm still going to stick to the portable version

Christian Velasquez

@johnsmith1234: I'm running it on Windows 7 7100 on my Dell Optiplex 745:

1 small .ods spreadsheet: 5 seconds to load, 7293 KB RAM

Add 1 6 MB .doc file: 30 seconds to load and convert, 42,542KB RAM

FWIW

Ian W. Smith

@Ben Babcock: Nah... The only languages available are German and Portuguese.

@[distribution.openoffice.org]

Not sure how many seeds you'll get though; maybe they just added the option. I'm downloading the Windows version right now and am getting a decent number.

No OpenOffice OneNote, I imagine. :(

MollyGaze

If you want to be kind to the servers and "crowdsource" to bittorent the P2P page has been updated to have this new version

[distribution.openoffice.org]

Just pick your platform then 3.1 will show up.

hal.hockersmith

Any torrent available yet? I like using torrent for this because then I can say that "yes i do use bittorrent for legal things".

Plus it is generally faster when it is croudsourced.

hal.hockersmith

It's been a great option for my new netbook--while not as shiny as Word, it's much better than the Google App suite. I'm having a good time exploring.

@Nytmare10: um - Office 2007 apps (word, excel, and onenote is what i use) open in ~1.5 seconds for me. and ive never had any of them near 55mb - clorse to 35mb for me.

so, yeah, thats a lot better than OpenOffice

natenovs

i have been trying to use OO as an MS Word replacement and so far came across these issues/fixes:

--unresolved: difficult to find/replace special characters. must know the special codes (help>regular expressions). not sure if it can even find all the ones Word does..
-resolved: importing word docs shows a gray box for non-breaking spaces, need to disable this in options (formatting aids).
-resolved:must change default to save in ms word format (options>load/save).

other than these, it is worthy. so far the only thing that may make me ditch it is the find/replace issue.

LIVE WORD COUNT!! THAT'S ALL I WANT! WHY IS IT SO MUCH TO ASK?!? (please don't send me to the python script, I would rather not deal with a floating window...)

shatteredmindofbob

I have to admit the MS Office '07 ribbon made me throw up in my mouth at first, but now it's totally grown on me. I would Love to see OOo integrate something like that.

I am running OOo3 fine on Vista though, but Vista always seems to be a crap shoot.

Angry Numismatist

@greasypigarvin: I think OO 3.0 added native mac aqua support. But I know the last time I used open office 2.x for Mac (X11) it was the worst, most unstable Open office experiance I've ever had.

However Neooffice claims to still have added other performance tweaks.

That makes it like Go-oo. Faster and better than upstream, but upstream ignores the contributions, but people use it as a posterboy of FOSS

I have v3 on 2 computers xp pro and it works very well.

At work we had a new computer come with an office 2007 trial and Vista and I must say it was working very well and the 2 played nice with each other.
When the trial ended I uninstalled MS Office and Installed Oo v.3 and its terrible half the time you cannot tell if its froze and today it was crashing In Calc on every save.
So whats my point ? If you are running xp pro go for it it works great If you have Vista (don't know about win 7)
I would stick with MS 2007 or "03"

@johnsmith1234: I'm comparing NeoOffice to OO 3.0, and really, there's no comparison. 3.0 was a vast improvement to 2.0, but it's like a turtle versus a 3-legged turtle.

It made me embarassed when I told everyone at work who used a mac to switch over from Office, based on my experiences using OO on PC.

NeoOffice, on the other hand, has performed exactly as fast as OO is on PC.

aaugh. stuck in an "open document. sorry openoffice.org has crashed" loop.

@johnsmith1234: I just literally counted and it took me 12 seconds to open Writer, but I'm still using version 2.4.1. I didn't realize I hadn't upgraded it in so long.

I started using OO a couple of years ago when I needed a spreadsheet editor that could handle some Excel files with advanced formulas, never looked back to MS since.
Recently I made my first public presentation on Impress that covered my needs completely.
I write all my business documents on Write, I mean what more could you ask from a FREE office suite.
I wonder how many of the MSoffice advocates actually paid for it..

NeoOffice, which I've tried on a Mac creates half spaces randomly between letters, so that the word 'something" ends up looking like "somethin g". Very annoying. For that reason, I'm sticking with OpenOffice.

Gregory Fowler

@xlax: Did you try altsearch?

[extensions.services.openoffice.org]

thelastnamehere

I've been using it a bit lately and after getting 3.1 (my ISP in Australia has a mirror for all the big and good stuff) I'm running it - opened a *.doc edited it a bit (it opened within 3 or 4 secs) and then opened Draw with a big png image, added a chart - didn't save anything 133meg of memory - that's quite a bit but less than Firefox with 6 tabs open, but honestly I'm running all this with other programs open on a 3 year old XP box 1.5 gis of memory and everything snappy as anything.
So opened Office word with same doc and Powerpoint and it uses MORE memory than the two OO elements. I don't think memory use really is an issue.

idodialog