OpenOffice, sponsored primarily by SUN Microsystems, offers a near "clone" to Microsoft's OFFICE 2003 package:   Among other things, it has a WRITER program, that functions very much like WORD; and a CALC program that works very much like EXCEL.   There are a few differences... it's not a "perfect" clone... but for many users who don't have (and can't afford) OFFICE, it's generally a viable substitute.

OpenOffice is completely free.   The only "downside" is that is a HUGE download (over 100 MEG in size)... which, for anyone still using a dialup connection, might be prohibitive.

Since you indicate already having WORD and EXCEL, I don't believe you'll personally benefit much from getting OpenOffice.

Mike,

Thank you for the technical correction... I will edit my earlier response momentarily...

From personal experience using both MS Office 2003/2007 and OOo 2 I can say that both do equally well in general, and each is slightly better at some things than the other.  There are definitely differences, and things one might consider quirks, that you would need to get used to when switching from MSO to OOo but it is no more difficult than the switch from earlier versions of MS Office to the 2007 version. ;)

My take on it is that which one you use depends on what you are wanting or needing to do and which one meets those needs better.

I have both, Office 2003 and Open Office.  One thing I use the Open Office Writer for is saving files as PDF types - something Word 2003 does not offer.  I maintain a couple of web sites and the documents on the site are in PDF format.

I began using Star Office in 1995, on OS/2.  When Sun bought StarOffice and forked it off to become Open Office, it quickly became my main office suite.  I find it has some advantages over M$ Office, some disadvantages, but comes out on-par for the most part.

However, I became involved in IBM's Lotus Symphony as of late, another fork of Star Office, which has a lot of nice features as well.  However, the real differences are personal preference, not hard-features, so it comes down to personal preference.  I do, however, enjoy that there are three varients of the program, Sun's Star Office, IBM's Lotus Symphony, and Open Office.org.  Pick the one that suits your needs, and all files from each interchange without hassle.  With a handy plug-in, Microsoft's Office suite also can handle the Open Office document format.

RE: Lotus Symphony

What are the features that you are referring to?

Sherr

Open office is very similar to office 2003, it uses JAVA to load however, and therefore is slower to initially open.

Its free so might as well try it.

As for saving as pdf, I recommend pdf creator: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57796

I like office 2007 however. It also can save as pdf