OpenOffice... what do you think?

Well, considering the price, you can't lose.

I use Open Office but then again, I'm also not ever hooked on the bells and whistles of MS Office - I don't use the clip art, hardly at all; most of the time I'm inserting my own pictures or a graphic I've made myself.

I have OO on every one of my computers, I love it (though I don't use the Impress program much - Impress is the PowerPoint alternative).  I have opened other PP presentations in OO but since I rarely use it, I can't comment much on it.

I got OO because I needed to be able to open documents that customers sent me (when I was a web designer) but I didn't want to shell out the big bucks for MS.  I've never felt the need to use MS except for one thing - OO doesn't have an address book like MS, so if Outlook and the Address Book are important to you, then you'd best go back with MS. Otherwise, OO rocks!

I haven't tried to use Open office though I have an IT guy who has recommended it as a good alternative to Microsoft office.

I have found that you can open and edit the files. You might need to tweak a font here or a return there...but it works.

The clip art is nowhere near as robust as MS Office, but as I said, I rarely use clip art anyway.  I think MS Office is vastly over priced and have never been a fan of overpriced products where you pay for the name of a product that could actually be significantly better than it is.  LOL

I love OO and would never pay for MSOffice - I too do not use the address book nor do I need outlook - so OO is the cat's pajamas for me.

I use the Draw program a lot to create flyers (easier to work with than the word processer for what I want to do- Draw is similar to PrintShop or Printmaster - the only drawback is that it does NOT work with MS Publisher files at all.  So if you use Publisher, you will need MS Publisher.  Fortunately, I have never needed Publisher except for one or two documents.

I don't use either, but I've heard OO is pretty much as good.  Of course the price tag is much better at $0.  I've heard that unless you do some really extravagant things, you should experience no problems with OO.

I use OO, and have been quite pleased with it. Give it a try, If you don't like it you can uninstall.

I have to say download it! It is actually a better product than Microsoft and the best part is that it is free. You can do everything you do with Microsoft and in some cases even more. You also can even save it as a Mircosoft format if you are sending it to someone else who doesn't use OpenOffice.