A free and open productivity suite which is a strong challenger of Microsoft Office Suite is the OpenOffice. This open source project is marking its eighth year anniversary this month of October 2008. The OpenOffice desktop application productivity suite is a good open-source free alternative to Microsoft Office.

There are new features in version of 3.0 like the new Start Center, icons, and zoom control in the status bar, and more. It’s good to know that OpenOffice also supports file type format (.docx) which is being used by Microsoft Office 2007. If you are looking for a FREE open-source alternative to Microsoft Office 2007 suite then OpenOffice is a good software to start.

The launch for OpenOffice 3.0 is in Paris. It would be supported by the Region Île de France and various other sponsors as it’s a monumental mile stone for OpenOffice’s life. By the way you could download the latest version from http://download.openoffice.org/index.html. I hope that the new release will be more secure, flexible and stable than before.