Small Business

IBM Releases Beta 4 of Free Lotus Symphony Suite

By Rick Broida

Updated on: February 5, 2008 / 10:29 AM EST / MoneyWatch

Remember Lotus Symphony, the free office suite introduced by IBM last September? It's like a kinder, gentler version of OpenOffice (meaning it's nicer-looking and more user-friendly than the popular open-source suite). IBM just took the wraps off a new beta, bringing a host of new features and bug fixes to the table. Among them:

Faster spell-check.
Support for importing existing slides into Symphony presentations.
Support for password-protected Excel files.
A developer's toolkit that will allow for the creation of plug-ins.

Nothing earth-shattering, to be sure, but it's good to see that IBM is continuing to develop this Microsoft Office alternative. If you haven't tried Symphony, which offers business-caliber word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, I definitely recommend it. [via Office Tweaks]