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

While the current beta of OpenOffice 3 doesn’t support PDF editing yet, it does include lot of new feature including the ability to read and edit Microsoft Office 2007 files formats.

Calc now supports upto 1024 columns per spreadsheet while Writer can display multiple pages during editing. The new version is also compatible with Windows Vista.

OpenOffice.org has also said that PDF editing features will become available soon via a PDF Import extension that’s currently under development - now this would be a real free alternative to Acrobat.

Download OpenOffice.org 3.0 here.