Alternatives to Microsoft office

I'm looking for an alternative to Microsoft office. At the moment im using a student edition and looking for a cheaper alternative. Just wondering if anyone has used Star Office and Open office. What were your experiances of it? I understand its completely compatible with office documents?

Thanks

Michael

 

OpenOffice is very good. Only small problem is that a few Office graphical tools don't convert nicely, but once a picture is pasted in, Openoffice handles it better than MSoffice. Otherwise conversion is perfect for me and I love the pdf output.

Current version is lacking an access like database, but version 2 has one.
Just try it for yourself.

And of course, there's the linux version, identical to the windows one, says one tux to another

 

A friend of mine has open office to do all his university work and he says its very good. Havent tried it myself though.

 

A magazine reviewed Star Office once and it said that it was very good in what it offered, but was lacking in features or their implementations slightly.

 

Another "vote" for Open Office ... although I mainly use M$ Office, I also have Open Office installed, which I also use occasionally. It gets better and better with every release - you can grab the latest beta release from Beta News - OpenOffice.org for Windows 2.0 (Snapshot Build 1.9.m79) - http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/OpenOfficeorg_for_Windows/1009574294/1