Should you need an office system which sits on your laptop and doesn’t cost a penny, (or benefit Mr B Gates), then you’ll be pleased to know Open Office 2.3 is available from now, here.
There’s a host of new functionality and bug fixes, which are detail in the release notes. Suffice to say I’ve used it as a legal alternative to expensive or hacked copies of Microsoft products, and found it to be really usable, and there’s been no problems using Open Office files with MS Word files when transferring between machines, or home and work.
I’d suspect most people would have an office suite of software on which ever computer they own, but if, for ideological, updating, or ‘Ooops I’ve formatted the hard drive’ reasons you need the likes of a word processor, spreadsheet application etc, then Open Office is ideal.