OpenOffice.org have just released the first public beta of OpenOffice 3, a Microsoft Office like suite of programs that works across all platforms.

Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).

A more detailed guide to the features can be found at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/...elistbeta.html