A new version of OpenOffice is out promising people who download it faster launch speeds and better support for Microsoft Office 2007 files. Naturally, the suite is as its name suggests, completely free.

OpenOffice 3.2 for Windows, Mac, and Linux also sees the debut of comments in Impress, encryption support for Office 2007-formatted files, and smoother sort, merging, and copy and paste functions in Calc. There are few more tweaks so that highlighting stands out better with a new blue background and edging.

Performance improvements are noticeable, although when restarting OpenOffice after the upgrade, the QuickStarter app was disabled. It can be restarted without rebooting via the Start menu either in the OpenOffice folder or the Startup folder, even without the QuickStarter app running in the background. Writer launches much faster than before, and the spreadsheet component Calc is really quick.

So far there is no support for Windows 7 features such as jump lists and Aero Peek previews.