Playing with beta software is a good (if slightly risky) way to find out what’s coming round the corner. OpenOffice.org 3.2 is due for release early in the new year, and I’ve been using a beta version to investigate the new features.

The good news is that the software has proved to be perfectly stable in use. I had one little glitch when I first loaded the software, but this was due to some stuff left behind from an old beta of a previous version. Once that was out of the way, everything worked ok.

First impressions:

• it’s faster to get going. When we launched 3.0, there were complaints that the new version took longer to load. The complaints were justified , but the developers have worked hard since them to identify and eliminate the delays, so 3.2 is faster than ever.
• the Calc developers have excelled themselves with a whole raft of new stuff, from sorting to new functions to filters … the list just goes on and on
• the Chart team have also been busy, adding a couple of nice new charts, but also tidying up the menus and making the whole thing more obvious in use. And you’re right, there isn’t am OpenOffice.org Chart, like there is a Calc and a Writer – it’s a set of common tools that are available in the other applications.

So, it’s a shame the final version won’t be available in time for Santa to put in your Christmas stocking, but it will make a nice New Year prezzie . If you’d like to download the beta, head off to the download page, click on Get OpenOffice.org Developer Snapshots, then click on Developer Build – Download the most recent OOo-Dev 3.2.0 build.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.