Symphony Beta 2
Well IBM is still working on improving / rolling out it’s Symphony suite (story here) before it completely releases it. Symphony is a FREE office suite (based on OpenOffice). It is based on the open document standard, but can read and write word compatible files. Personally I have mine set up to auto save in .doc, .xls, and .ppt where I do not have to remember to do SAVE AS vs SAVE. The option to do that is in the tools menu.
Anyway, I know Open Office / Symphony is a great solution for non profits, small business and home users. I personally have deployed it in all of those environments and Open Office / Symphony all run nicely. At first the different menus may take a few minutes for some hardened Office users, but after a few minutes every user seems be able to handle it fairly well.
