The main doubt that arise when thinking about to change is; Will I be able to work with documents to be exchanged later with people who use Microsoft Word? Well, the answer is yes, but ...

These suites discussed here can read documents created in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint (Access is not allowed), and they open a document as if the user had opened it with Microsoft software, it will be displayed on screen as designed in Microsoft unless the document is very complex.

The only thing you need to keep in mind is when saving the document, if we want to save it for another user who works with Microsoft Word, save it as, or export, to the format of Microsoft.

These suites are free, fully functional and stable, and are upgradeable by the Internet regularly. And they don't install extraneous programs like Microsoft software does.

There are other alternatives in addition to NeoOffice or OpenOffice, like the recent iWorks from Apple, software, which in my opinion is better than Microsoft Office, especially due to its user friendly interface and price.

All include a word processor (Word), spreadsheet software (Excel), slideshow software (PowerPoint), and some inlcude a drawing program.