I am thinking of downloading "Open Office"?

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Easy to use

OpenOffice.org 3 is easy to learn, and if you're already using another office software package, you'll take to OpenOffice.org 3 straight away. Our world-wide native-language community means that OpenOffice.org 3 is probably available and supported in your own language. And if you already have files from another office package - OpenOffice.org 3 will probably read them with no difficulty.

get it from here

http://download.openoffice.org/

IMHO I'm outraged on how much Microsoft charges for its software (both their OS and their Office suites). Open Office is an excellent office suite that is 99% compatible with Microsoft Office. There are some minor difference between the two office suites but nothing that a little training up won't fix. I think the main advantage that Open Office has over MS Office is the ability to save files in ODF, which is an international office standard. All office suites (except Microsoft Office) saves to this format which means you will be able to share documents easily with Mac users, Linux users, Amiga users, or even OS/2 Warp users.

I think it comes down to this, are you so use to MS Office that you would be ineffective if you switched to another office suite? If so then you should stay will MS Office and accept the insane cost of the program. If you can learn a new program and find the price tag ($0) acceptable (I know I find it acceptable) then switch. Just remember you can have both programs on your system at the same time. Since Open Office is 100% free (both in cost and freedom), why not download it and give it a try. If you hate it, uninstall it.

You'll get a lot of encouragement for OpenOffice from the Yahoo! Answers crowd. This is mostly well-deserved. However, keep in mind that there are some features in Microsoft Office that will not work in OpenOffice. The most notable is "track changes." If this is a feature you use regularly, you should consider purchasing MS Office. Some other complex features also won't work (such as macros).

If you don't know what any of that stuff is and/or you don't use it. Then you're fine. Go with OpenOffice.

The nice thing about OO is that it's free. So if you want, you can use OpenOffice and decide if it fits your needs, then, if you need MSOffice, you can always buy that later. You can even run both at once if you chose.

Hope that helps! Good luck!

I have tried Open Office and although I was impressed, I found that it takes a lot longer to load up when you want to use it, Microsoft is almost instant but obviously it is quite expensive, OO has a different way of doing certain things also and finding out how things work can be a bit time consuming, overall, I would say, if you have not got Microsoft Office and do not want to pay for it, open Office is really worth getting and it`s free.

Free is free. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice are both free. I suggest you try them both and decide for yourself which one is better for your purposes. Microsoft Office requires no download or install, so it doesn't use any drive space. You use Microsoft Office in your web browser at Office.com

I downloaded Open Office onto my laptop.

I have to admit - I do prefer Microsoft.

However - I think it is a pretty decent alternative to Microsoft, as it has many of the same or similar features.

I would advise that you give it a go - if you don't like it, you can always uninstall it and purchase Microsoft Software.

C:

It's good value because it's free!

It is a very close clone of Office 2003, and mostly compatible. I use it because I have a Linux based laptop, and didn't want to install XP or vista just to use MS Office. I find it is fine, and I can switch from MS Office to Open Office with ease.

Depends to what level you use your programs. If you only use basic tools, it is acceptable but if you use programs to more advanced level, especially Excel and Access, you will find it can't do half the things you want to and certainly not half the shortcuts that are possible with Office and though most of the programs in OO aren't too bad I suppose, when it comes to Draw, it certainly can't compare at all to Publisher. I persoally think its worth paying for the best - and there's no contest about that - Microsoft!

It depends what you use it for. If you do a lot of crazy excel work and access database stuff, buy Microsoft Office student edition.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=microsoft...

If you just do the occassional spreadsheet and word document, download open office. OOo is probably one of the best open source apps out there and 90% of the time can do what you need it to do. Version 3 is great!

http://www.openoffice.org/

Jim - http://propersky.com/

Its pretty good, takes a bit of getting used to but does most of the stuff that office does. I would take it over the latest version of office any day, I personally would go for 2003 version of office.