I use OpenOffice 3.2 not only because it's free (heck, anyone would shell out the money if they really needed something), but because it's simply good enough. If it weren't or if it had a ton of bugs, I wouldn't care if Sun gave me $1,000 to download and use it. For the price ($0.00) it doesn't have to be as good as MS Office either.

As it is, I find it easy to use, adequate for my needs, reliable, fast enough, and modern enough. For the price of MS Office, just buy a much faster CPU or buy your wife something nice.

...unless you get it from TPB. Else you still have to buy Office 2007.

As to the above comments. Free OpenOffice.org vs paid-for MS Office OO.o wins, if both are free, MS Office is far better.

MS Office (in contrast to IE) is a good product.

People (like me) use firefox because it's better than IE. Being free doesn't hurt, but IE is free too.

People (like me) use OO because it's free and MS Office is not free, not because OO is better.

so you can upgrade from the 'bad version' to the 'worse version' for free?

haha no wonder people use open office!