For some time, NXS has used OpenOffice internally — although we’ve been using the beta version of OpenOffice 3 to really make it work with clients who send us all kinds of documents using different versions of Microsoft Word DOC files, Powerpoint presentations, etc. Today, OpenOffice 3 is officially out of beta and available for download as a public release. In addition, OpenOffice is the standard office suite being used by governments and state-owned IT enterprise firms throughout Latin America (including BrOffice, the unique Brazilian version of OpenOffice). One main benefit is that OpenOffice 3 is now able to natively run on Mac OS X without having to first install X11. The OpenOffice website has been reduced to a crawl as people all over the world download the latest release — you can experience it yourself or read about it on Tectonic. OpenOffice 3 represents a major leap forward for the open source office suite and makes its usability more viable than ever.