Ok....This is the best cross-platform office program available out there, and its free.

Right. And you can use it to fix broken MS office files. This works well with word and excell files. Open it with OO, save it, finish. I use OO since two years and never had to work with microsoft office any more.

I like OO.

I would say iWork or Office 2007 are the best. OpenOffice.org 's GUI is too Linux-ey.

Office 2007's Ribbon Interface - Genius.

Keep 'em coming Mr. Gates and Mr. Jobs.

Sohil, did you try the new 2.0 version? It does absolutely not look Linuxey...

Tried it but I'm still uncomfortable around it. It is definitely a huuuge improvement over 1.0 but still doesn't feel native.

For Ex : Right Click and Paste is at the bottom. For most apps it's at the top usually.

It's little like that.

*It's little things like that.

If you're on a Mac, <a href="http://neooffice.org/">NeoOffice</a> is based on OO and the new beta version is in pretty OSX style, having ditched the clunky Windows 98-looking interface. I haven't used any Microsoft software programs in over a year, and it hasn't affected my work at all.

Unfortunately I do lots of presentations and the computers at school have Office XP. So compatibility is another issue. I tried to do a report on the Boxing Day Tsunami using OpenOffice.org (tested it at home), come out terrible.

Office 2007's Ribbon Interface - Genius

Sohil, an interesting view

I've been using the beta version of excel and word and, as a pretty experienced excel user, find the change in UI inexplicable (unless MS are simply banking on getting hold of a load of new users who have nothing to 'unlearn')

@sohil: formatting can become ugly when you open OO in MS, that's true. Most of the time I put out PDFs - so I dont have that problem. But I see what you mean.

I was talking about Powerpoint to Impress (and vice-versa) funana. I really love the export to PDF feature in it though (although Office 07 has it now too)

ahh. Powerpoint. I fell in love with OO draw