It is a major release and all users should download it," according to the OpenOffice.org website. The look and feel of OpenOffice.org is similar to previous versions but the functionalities have indeed improved. Among the applications, Calc had the most changes, particularly with the introduction of the improved chart wizard. OpenOffice.org 2.3 was released last Sept. 17, 2007 and can be downloaded from: http://www.openoffice.org/

It runs on Linux, Mac, Solaris and MS Windows. It is very easy to install. After downloading, simply click on the downloaded file then follow the instructions. If previous versions of OpenOffice.org are already installed, you can overwrite it using the wizard. If you are an MS Office user and are not yet ready to commit to using OpenOffice.org, you can select MS Office as the default application for opening your files.

What are the new features?

1. There are major changes to the charts in Calc. The new chart wizard for chart creation is much more simple and more logical. The appearance of the 3D charts have been enhanced. Some of the interesting new charts are the ‘3D exploded pies’ and ‘exploded donuts’ (see screenshot).

2. Inline matrix/array constants in formulas are now supported and summation has been made more powerful. It is now even more compatible with Microsoft Excel, with, workarounds for cotangent functions, which is missing from Microsoft Excel.

3. Writer documents are now centered. There is also a new filter for exporting documents to MediaWiki ("Wikipedia") format.

4. The Report Builder extension for Base (available as extension on http://extensions.services.openoffice.org) had been updated. There are also new keyboard shortcuts for more efficient database navigation.

5. In Impress, the ‘move along curve’ animation feature was added back in.

6. Writer, Calc, Draw, and Impress can be previewed within a browser before exporting it to .html format. The default security level for Macro Security has been changed to High, to make it difficult for users to run possibly malicious macros ‘without thinking’.

7. An improved password system is introduced for data protection.

Try it out. It’s definitely worth the download.

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