OpenOffice and the New Face

I was quite pleased to have read that OpenOffice.org is in the process of changing its user-interface - away from the shadows of the older versions of Microsoft Office. Currently, I have version 3.1 installed in my home computer and version 3.0 installed all over the place. Even installed a copy for my colleague because she needed to do some slides for the boss and most of us only have Microsoft Office Basic (Word, Excel and Outlook).

Hah, this opens up the opportunity for me to whine: My colleague is using Microsoft Office 2007 Basic while I'm only using Microsoft Office 2000. I would have done away with Microsoft Office at work if not for compatibility problems, especially with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer. Things tend to run about (especially with formatting and embedded images) when I open a document done on the other version. Sigh. I don't have this luxury at home and didn't want to pay for Microsoft Office, so OpenOffice.org it is (by the way, for those that didn't know, OpenOffice.org is FREE!).

Anyway, back to the new UI... currently, OpenOffice.org Impress (equivalent of Microsoft's Powerpoint) looks like this:
And the new prototype shown in one of Sun's blogs looks like this:
Compare the toolbars. They look unique to each other and significantly different enough from Microsoft's Fluent UI. I hope not worse, though.

via OSNews.

Update: Great. After reading through OSNews, it seems the new OpenOffice.org looks like Microsoft's Fluent UI after all. I'm screwed! I thought they looked different! Looks like there's no escape from Microsoft's shadows. :(