A free office software suite designed as an alternative to Microsoft Office was announced Monday by the OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org 3.0. The software covers a variety of tasks, including spreadsheets, word processing and presentation work; XML support and XSLT based filter support, import filters for MS Office file formats: .docx. xlsx, pptx.
Editions are also available for a variety of different operating systems.
Another interesting feature is Solver, a solution engine for combinatorial optimization problems that is a strong selling point for the commercial Excel package from Microsoft.
This version is an important milestone release and could help boost the program's market share, particularly on Mac OS X, where it now provides a much higher level of platform integration; but it is once again available in PC and Linux as well.
Returning to the OS X, these changes are also said to aid in performance and stability, and introduce support for Mac OS X's accessibility APIs, which primarily help people with little to no eyesight. The Mac version is now native and no longer requires the Unix X11 environment.
The release had originally been scheduled for mid September. OpenOffice (163 MB) for Mac requires OS X Tiger or later and an Intel Mac. The installer of OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Windows is only about 140MB in size but it takes a little bit longer to install.
OpenOffice's Web site greeted its Monday visitors with the following message: “Apologies - our website is struggling to cope with the unprecedented demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org. The technical teams are trying to come up with a solution.” In other words the software is far from lacking demands.
OpenOffice 3.0 comes with new features and performance enhancements.
Sun Microsystems released version 3.0 of its free and open source (FOSS) office suite Openoffice.org on Monday. It has been reported that the new version comes with a number of performance enhancements and new features. Openoffice.org 3.0 now claims to work out of the box in  Mac OS X as a native  Aqua application.

News sources report the official download servers of OpenOffice.org crashed soon after the release due to heavy downloads. Downloads are however available from a number of mirror sites.



Openoffice.org 3.0 suite includes  spreadsheet,  word processor,  equation editor,  presentation tool,  relational database and  vector drawing software. Full interoperability is available for  Microsoft Office 98/XP formats, but offers read only support for  OOXML file formats. This version supports the new  ODF 1.2 document format. The software is available for many platforms including  Linux,  Microsoft Windows and Mac, as well as in multiple languages.

Users report OpenOffice.org 3.0 has introduced a new graphical and text-based hybrid equation editor, a  mail merge wizard, improved label templates and better interface for outlining. Solver, a spreadsheet add-on for  combinatorial optimization problems is included in this version.

Other enhancements highlighted by enthusiasts include collaborative options that allow multiple users to edit documents at the same time and improved drawing and charting tools. OpenOffice.org 3.0 can now display multiple pages during editing and workbooks up to 1024 columns in each spreadsheet.

The download size of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is 163 MB for Mac and requires OS X Tiger or later and an Intel Mac. The installer for Windows is about 145 MB in size. 

"As government after government, enterprise after enterprise adopt the Open Document Format, they frequently adopt OpenOffice.org and love it. With 3.0, the application is more interoperable with MS Office, more capable, more extensible. It frees the desktop from vendor lock-in," claimed Louis Suárez-Potts, community manager of OpenOffice.org.