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The release candidate 2 of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now ready for testing. This test release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage.

OpenOffice is a great free alternative for opening and creating office documents. OpenOffice 3 series is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 documents. OpenOffice 3 will open Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, allow you to edit them, and also save them back in Microsoft’s format, where other users of the Microsoft Office suites can open them.

OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 RC2 Release Notes

Download OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 RC2

In case you were rooting for Vista to take over the world, we’ve got bad news. The agency that takes care of all things technology in regards to education in the U.K., Becta, states in a press release that the upgrade to Vista should be “avoided.”

Considering that free and open source operating systems and office suites do things about as well if not better than Microsoft products, especially if price is taken into consideration, this is hardly surprising. Becta stated that a primary reason is incompatibility – Office 2007′s lack of support for the ODF format as well as the new Office format (those blasted DOCX files) – which doesn’t make it a hot contender.

The release recommends that Vista should be considered an option only if there are any institution-wide ICT provisions being planned. Even so, that doesn’t sound too good when you have schools on a budget trying to get the most out of their money. And when it comes to the bottom line, the Microsoft option looks downright grim.

The beginning of a trend? Perhaps. It’s hard to beat free.

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