Was checking out OpenOffice over the weekend. Thoughts:

• Someone should really start a SourceForge project to provide a Freely licensed clipart and template library for this. Maybe Creative Commons will do the trick?
• Open Office is promising, but — even with fonts, clipart and templates (which is effectively StarOffice) — it is more comparable to Microsoft Works than Office.
• Writer and (especially) Calc seem capable, usability falls off rapidly after that.
• StarOffice retails for $75, probably with hefty discounts for enterprise adopters: but any company with retraining needs will probably think long and hard before dumping Office. The functionality one gets in Office is simply not there. For low-end requirements, however, it might do.
• I’d expect to see a beefed-up version of Works — perhaps packaged for businesses — retailing for $49 if SO gets significant uptake. Or even a run-across-the-LAN version of Office with flexible pricing options.
• While discussing Office suites, it’s sometimes forgotten that IBM actually has a more capable office suite than StarOffice itself — it’s called Smartsuite. Wonder how many people buy it for $205. IBM is slowly sending a pretty good product to the shadowlands, imho.

Completely irrelevant point, but: Open Office takes the hat for the silliest abbreviation in the software space — `OO.o’, for OpenOffice.org. Sheesh.