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OpenOffice 3.2 Released

harmonise writes "Version 3.2 of the OpenOffice.org office suite is now available. This marks the tenth anniversary year of the office suite, with over three hundred million downloads recorded in total. The new features include faster start up times; improved compatibility with open standard (ODF) and proprietary file formats; improvements to all components, particularly the Calc spreadsheet, with over a dozen new or enhanced features; and the Chart module (usable throughout OpenOffice.org) has had a usability makeover as well as offering new chart types."

9 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. External references by Enderandrew · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First off, congrats on getting the release out the door. I do appreciate the project.

    That being said, in 3.0, supposedly there was support in Calc to external references (to values in other documents). In 3.1, it was supposedly fixed. It still didn't work.

    I'm curious to see if it finally works in 3.2. And for those who don't know, you should check out Novell's fork/non-standard builds over at go-oo.org. Many Linux distros use these builds automatically, but if you're on Windows, that is the version I'd grab. They have several nice improvements over the upstream version.

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  2. Clippy by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sorry, but I refuse to use any office suite that doesn't have animated characters telling me what to do.

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  3. Re:Nothing That New or Innovative... by doti · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A minor (3.x) release is not meant to be innovative. That's for a major release (4.0).

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  4. Re:Nothing That New or Innovative... by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once I bought my father in law a really, really nice hammer. There wasn't made of titanium or anything like that; it didn't have any kind of electronic controls or clever mechanical gizmos to help you swing it straight. It wasn't innovative. It was just a really, really well made hammer.

    He was pleased with it, even though the hammer he already owned was in approximate terms very similar to the one I gave him. In precise terms it wasn't anywhere near as nice.

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  5. Just Faster??? I wish I was just Richer!!! by viraltus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Word processors cannot be improving in terms of features forever and, anyway, people only use a small percentage of those, so I think "just" faster is "just" right.

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  6. Confession time by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Although I hated Clippy with a great passion, I liked the professor office helper. If Microsoft had chosen the professor, I don't think they would have gotten the vitriol they did. Clippy was a smug jackass. Not a helpful, humble character like the professor. He looked like Einstein, so he seemed to be smart, but he was also old which made him seem like a kind grandparent. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that he did teach me some things about word, I didn't already know.

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  7. Re:ok? by natehoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OO's startup times in Windows XP used to bug the crap out of me. Doubleclick on a spreadsheet, and it might be a minute or so, sometimes more, before you were off to the races. This was on a decent Athlon64 2 GHz with 1GB RAM, not exactly a slouch of a machine.

    Then I tried it on my old Athlon 1.3Ghz with 384MB RAM in Linux Mint, and it started in about 10 seconds.

    On my new beast (Athlon II 3.0GHz, 4GB RAM, Linux Mint) OpenOffice starts in just a few seconds.

    I was utterly astonished at the speed difference of OO between Windows and Linux, and it makes perfect sense to me why Windows users don't like it as much - it's a dog. I hope they've improved its Windows performance in 3.2, for the sake of those using it on Windows.

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  8. Re:bigger tables anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    640 columns should be enough for anyone

  9. Re:Nothing That New or Innovative... by tyrione · · Score: 5, Informative

    Right on the heels of MS 2010 beta. Doesn't appear to be much new things, it's just faster. Still. Openoffice is the best office suite out there in my opinion.

    Native OpenType Postcript fonts alone makes it finally worth exploring Writer.