Never had a problem with OpenOffice at all. In fact, many of our students who have computers at home typically have the minimum of what is offered by Microsoft and that doesn't include Word, Power Point, Excell, etc. Typically the word processing program that the computers come with is Works - which if they are working on a paper at home and then need to transfer it to school, the file has to go thru a conversion of sorts in order for Word to open it. (Right click on the file>open with IE> Save as Word file> and then open in Word).

However, OpenOffice doesn't have to do that, you can open it up in Word as long as it is saved as such. You have the option to save the file in a certain format. Same with the other programs in the suite. The only thing I have found that has a problem is some spread sheet commands in Excell. Works as well in 2000 as it does in XP and 2003. I have suggested to quite a few students and staff members to check it out and download it - so far everyone has been very happy with it.

I know of a few districts in the area that the Tech Coord. are using OpenOffice as the main suite on general lab computers.

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