[RayChuang88]

However, the OpenOffice substitute is not really that great--I've tried OpenOffice and its interface feels clunky compared to the interface of Office 2003 and 2007.

[P8riot]

Maybe so, but the functionality of Calc, the OO speadsheet app, really exceeds Excel. Since a majority of what I do is analysis I use OO Calc exclusively.

[Hazwaste]

I've tried OpenOffice and its interface feels clunky compared to the interface of Office 2003 and 2007.

Is it $400 worth of clunky?

[cameraman]

I agree with your OpenOffice assessment. It is nice because it's free, but I disagree with the author's comments about Microsoft Office. I'm no shill for Microsoft, but I will defend a good product when I think it deserves it, and Office deserves it. Office has tons of on-line support, and its products are well designed and have many useful new features. It's biggest problem is the price tag.

The other aspect of this is the end user's ability to learn a new software set. Half of my users still have trouble identifying the difference between Windows and Office. There is no way they will want to learn a new software set and it would take most of my time explaining/exploring how to do something in OpenOffice that they used to do in Word.

[bcsco]

The only thing that prevents me from using MSOffice 2000 is a viable alternative for Outlook that synchronizes with my Palm. Evolution in Ubuntu does, but is screws up the synchronization process and I get all kinds of duplicates.

Thunderbird/Lightning is a good application, but doesn’t offer synchronization. If-and-when it does, I’d switch in a heartbeat.