MS Office Alternatives

[digitalx3d]

I'm curious if any of you have previously been long time users of MS Office (word, excel, outlook specifically), and have since jumped ship and started using and of the other free apps instead. I've thought about trying Open Office or Star Office. Then what about a comparable email package? Gmail? Thunderbird?

I've kind of reached a point where I either need to upgrade to the newer version, or jump ship to something else. Frankly, I hate the recent updated interface in MS Office. It's like an obstacle course. I don't really have any gripes with Outlook though. But I'd rather not shell out $350 if the free alternatives have become close 2nds in recent times.

It'd be interesting to hear people's experiences...

[simmsimaging]

I use google docs quite a bit and have since they were first implemented, but I have OpenOffice installed as well for some spreadsheets. That is simply because it's occasionally hard to get some spreadsheets to upload to google docs.

Both seem to work fine to me, although I'm a pretty light-weight user.