2.1) New Features

• Export to Adobe PDF
• Improved Microsoft Office compatibility
• Improved stability due to new development and QA process
• Faster initial load time
• Accessibility features as required by many governments
• Support for vertical and bidirectional writing and complex text layout
• XML filter tool including filters for DocBook and XHTML
• Macro recorder & software development kit
• See our Features Page for more information

2.2) OpenOffice.org Momentum

World Wide:

So far (August 2003) more than 18,000,000 copies of OpenOffice.org have been downloaded. This number does not include the distribution through Linux bundlings like SuSE, Red Hat or Mandrake.

Germany:

The City of Munich decided to switch to Linux and OpenOffice.org.

Thailand:

The government in Thailand is shipping Linux PC's including OpenOffice.org to ordinary citizens. As a consequence Microsoft is discounting Windows and Office down to $36.

South Africa:

Sahara Computers (www.sahara.co.za), the second largest distributor of PC's in South Africa, has begun to ship OpenOffice.org 1.0.x with all its branded products.

France:

Hospital of Avranches-Granville in Normandy, France, migrated 400 desktops to OpenOffice.org.

US:

Wal-Mart ships many different Linux PC's that have OpenOffice.org installed.

OEM/Bundling:

• Linux distributions (SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, Knoppix, ...)
• PC's (HP in Thailand, Toshiba with Lycoris, Sony through StarOffice)

There may be no other office suite software available with character-set, menus, help and spelling dictionaries in their first language.

All users can now download an office suite for no charge that is extremely stable on their operating system platform and gain unmatched productivity with equal or less training than it takes to upgrade to a new version of the leading proprietary office suite.

Users and their organizations will enter a new open and well supported office suite arena where they will never again worry about support or file format continuity being broken by their software vendor.

Cost and productivity savings are beyond estimation.

Users and systems administrators can use different operating systems in-house and still have all documents created and stored in a single future-proof XML file format where fine-granular content within documents is finely searchable and extendable to the Web.

An OpenOffice.org document's native XML file format allows content to be accessed, managed and extended OUTSIDE the office suite application, for example, with viewing, editing and transmitting file content with small hand-held devices and PDA's. Despite the open file format confidential documents can be password protected which includes a 128-bit encryption of the content.

OpenOffice.org has many language versions of the software in development, some of which are typically not supported by traditional office suites, e.g. Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans in South Africa. As a consequence OpenOffice.org will be available to many more users around the world in their first language.

See the comparison document at:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/openoffice/index.html
the FAQ's at:

//FAQs/mostfaqs.html#7
the presentation file at:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/presentations-pdf/thu1500/SOvsOOo.pdf
and the StarOffice product page at:

http://www.sun.com/staroffice

Sam Hiser
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
Email: swhiser@openoffice.org
Phone: +1 508 627-5944

Louis Suárez-Potts
OpenOffice.org Community Manager
CollabNet, Inc.
Email: louis@openoffice.org
Phone: +1 510 384-3843

Erwin Tenhumberg
Product Marketing Manager
Desktop Solutions Group
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Email: erwin.tenhumberg@sun.com
Phone: +1 510 928-1033

Local OpenOffice.org Marketing Contacts
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html

14) Contact Company Information

15) Distribution

This is a global announcement for synchronous release.