[GeronL]

LibreOffice is the top choice I think. It is free and easy.

[Cvengr]

mark for later

[markomalley]

Libreoffice works pretty good in my experience. http://www.libreoffice.org/

[Darksheare]

OpenOffice 3.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I don’t have a computer or a smart phone so I really can’t help. I do all my posting from a touch tone phone on a land line.

[FreedomStar3028]

I use open office. Never heard of Libre Office, will give it a shot at some point.

[FreedomStar3028]

You could also always download a full working version of the newest MS-Office for free (depending on your POV).

[Red in Blue PA]

Open Office works great for me.

I am not paying hundreds for software which has not changed in 20 years.

[cunning_fish]

Open Office.
It is almost as functional.

[Marie]

I’ve been using Open Office for years. No issues.

[arthurus]

I have used Open Office for years.

[Daveinyork]

I’m wondering if anyone has tried Office365.

[for-q-clinton]

The free cloud based version of office.

[norwaypinesavage]

MS Office ‘97 is vastly superior to all of the open source alternatives that I have tried. This is most apparent in trying to use spreadsheets. I use Excel ‘97 mostly for engineering plotting. The Open Office attempts don’t even come close to being able to make the simplest multi-axis non-linear plots. Excel ‘97 does just fine.

[Adult Dog]

http://openoffice.apache.org/ - version 4.0 now available

[ShadowAce]

[ShadowAce]

I’m running LibreOffice 4.1 with zero issues.

[kevkrom]

I use OpenOffice exclusively on my own personal machines.

For one, I have a mix of Linux, Windows, and OS X computers that I access on at least a semi-regular basis. OpenOffice gives me consistency between platforms.

The only problem I’ve had is that while it will read and export to MS Office formats, anything that’s dependent on exact positioning for layout might not look right going from one to the other. (I usually send PDFs rather than the document files if the receiver just needs to read, not edit.)

[Tainan]

Chiming in late with an OPEN OFFICE recommendation.

http://www.openoffice.org/

I've been using it for the last 2 1/2 years. Works very well and very good compatibility with MS Office and other word processing progs.
And its free.

[Still Thinking]

The only one I’ve tried is Open Office, and I’d describe it as adequate for most people, but clunky. There are several features in office that I need that OO doesn’t replicate, so I can’t use it as a total replacement Search for non-printing characters in work, like ^t for tab, Excel has some things missing from Calc, but I can’t remember which ones. Plus I hate some of the other items the common MRU file list, etc.