> Now the question. Is it worth my while to download Open Office and install
> it. Does Open Office have enough file conversion options to take care of
> this file format bullshit? Does Open Office do a good enough job, so if I
> send a document that looks like a Word document with a DOC extension, their
> Word program will reproduce it correctly?
I've been using Open Office on Linux for quite a while and routinely exchange files with MS Office users. It mostly works fine.
I have sometimes had problems when MS introduces a new format and, for a while, O O does not support it. Asking the MS user to save in an older format is a work-around.
Only one document I have seen stumped O O. It was a Word file of a technical journal paper with a really complex format. Two columns, many equations, tables, greek letters, ... I could edit the thing in O O, but the on-screen formatting was horrendous; I gave up and used Word.