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ThinkFree Office 3 Office Suite Released

ThinkFree Office 3 Office Suite Released

by , 5:00 AM EDT, June 29th, 2005

ThinkFree Inc. announced Tuesday the release of ThinkFree Office 3, a cross-platform office suite.

The software suite features a Microsoft-like user interface, critical feature support, and interoperation with existing Microsoft Office files. ThinkFree's Java architecture allows for interoperability between Windows, Linux or Macintosh operating systems, as well as flexibility that makes it an ideal home, education or small-business "Office" complement or alternative.

Major features in ThinkFree Office 3 include:

  • A word processor (Write), spreadsheet (Calc), and graphics presentation software (Show)
  • Document viewing compatibility with Microsoft Office
  • Multi-platform support with Windows, Linux, and Macintosh
  • Cross-platform compatibility (Windows compatible fonts bundled for Mac & Linux platforms)
  • A full-featured drawing module for all three applications
  • A chart module and real-time spell checker
  • HTML & PDF export
  • XML (WordML and SpreadsheetML) support
  • Multi-language support including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese

ThinkFree Office 3 ThinkFree Office 3 requires Mac OS X 10.3 and is now available for purchase and downloads online at for the suggested retail price of US$49.95. It will be available across the U.S. through retailers later this summer, the company said.

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:Guest
Subject: That's great but..

why is the company called ThinkFree Inc. when the software costs $50? Not complaining, I'm sure it's great. Just an oddity...

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Think Free...

I think what the company name means is "Think Free (of Microsoft)"....

Close Name:Guest
Subject: .exe

pathetic. you need to rename the .dmg.exe to .dmg before mounting. and then you don't find a nice clean .app, or at least a .pkg. no, you need to run an install application i have no idea of. and of course, version 3 is only available on windows for the time being. and anyhow, what file formats does it use? doesn't seem like it uses OpenDocument, as it is should. and what is up with ridiculous claims like "Reads and writes directly to the Microsoft Office file formats so no re-learning is necessary." as if a file format dictated the amount of "re-learning" necessary.

Close Name:pyxl8 Posts: 171 Joined: 24 Dec 2003
Subject: flakey app

Just my 2 cents, but I found that ThinkFree Office is buggy, non-Maclike, and crashes often for no apparent reason. I was very disappointed in it. Hopefully v3 will make it a actual viable substitute for MS Office, but I'll have to wait 'til the reviews are in. If there's a cheap upgrade path offered, I might give it another chance.

-Ken P

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Maybe it's better

Version 2 was really really bad. Nothing worked as advertised and the overall quality of the suite was very low. They have taken several years between version 2 and version 3. Lets hope those years were spent improving the product and not sitting on hands.

If you want an office suite download NeoOffice/J

Close Name:gslusher Posts: 2088 Joined: 13 Nov 2002
Subject: It couldn't be much worse

The earlier versions of ThinkFree were, as someone said, really really bad: crashed a lot, full of bugs, wouldn't open many Word documents with the correct formatting, and V---E---R---Y S-----------L----------O-------W. I tried using it for a while, but it was little better than AppleWorks with MacLink translations. I ended up buying MS Office when it was on sale (reduced price if you bought a new Mac) just to be able to use the Word and Excel files people send me.

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