Microsoft just updated their office online apps and their actually pretty good. I was using my skydrive when I got an invitation to try the new beta version of office online. The old versions were terrible(so is google docs) but the new ones are a LOT better. If you need office and don't have the cash, I would say try the online versions.
I always had a hard time formatting word documents before, now it works just like the offline version.
Oh and BTW its free, all you need is a skydrive account:
While Open Office and AbiWord are good if you don't want to spend any money, I know I'd be completely lost without Microsoft Publisher. Sure I could do without Word as there's more than enough word processing software out there that's freeware or open source, but Publisher is a must have on my computer.
Its like the first link hazel. Except its a newer version that looks and more importantly behaves like the installed version of word.
Open office and abiword can't compete with MS Office. As a teacher I couldn't live without PowerPoint, all students will need Word in college(no teacher cares why your documents aren't formatted correctly). And quite a few businesses would be up the creek without Excell. Libreoffice is impressive for a free product, but it can't compete with office.
(no teacher cares why your documents aren't formatted correctly)
My only experiences with Word were that formatting was NEVER the same on another computer.
I produced an impressive C .V. for a job search, and then as a test sent it to a friend and the paragraph at the bottom of the first page became split in two.
The problem was that my friend was using a version of Word that was one year younger than mine.
I dare to suggest that if a college standardized on one product out of the Open Office / Libre Office / Abiword world,
then even if the Teacher has a computer with a different dated version of the same product as a student's system,
the rendering of the document would be closer on those two systems than if it was Microsoft Word.
My only experiences with Word were that formatting was NEVER the same on another computer.
There's a choice to save some document extensions such as .doc with compatibility for older versions, which is something I always do because there's so many previous versions of Word.