I used it extensively and really liked it. It's probably 95% compatible with MS Office and should be good enough for most people to use as a free replacement for MS Office. There were a handful of things that didn't work quite correctly and paging was sometimes a little different, so I finally had to give up and use MS Office for files I was sharing with clients.

Thank you, Genes. This Acer did look like a lot for the money, but when I googled it and looked at customer reviews on various sites, they were pretty mixed. A number of people felt these broke down too early - and slowed down too early. So I looked around some more. I think at this point that it's between Toshiba and Lenovo Thinkpad. This process would be easier if I knew entirely how I'd be using it. I know I'll do lots of surfing, some emailing, probably recording some digital media and maybe very limited word processing with open office software. I know I want XP. I know I want reasonable speeds (it drives me crazy when I have just a few minutes and can't get pages to load and change quickly). I am definitely not a gamer and don't plan to watch movies on it. Here are some remaining questions: - why should I shy away from integrated video? most of the preconfigured well-priced XP laptops I've found seem to have integrated video. - I know I hate weights of 6 pounds and more. But I am torn about how small to go. Right now I'm not taking this back and forth to work - and I'm not likely to if it weighs even 5 pounds. Do I go with a small portable 12-13.3" laptop that weighs under 4 pounds? Might be fun to be willing to bring it more places with me. Other than higher price, what am I sacrificing to go that small. Anyone have laptops this small that they find really comfortable and easy to use - a pleasure to have and be able to tote around? The Toshiba that Raven linked earlier is not currently available, but I found a very similar one - linked below: http://www.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?omid=105&ref=bizrate&utm_source=Bizrate&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TBL300EZ1004X&sku=TBL300EZ1004X And here's a Lenovo Thinkpad on ebay - for about $150-200 less than selling elsewhere (note the seller will upgrade memory to 2GB for free - which means he will open the new-in-package laptop just for that purpose). This is not refurbished. When I tinkered with Lenovo's website to customize one, even with their current sales, I couldn't do nearly this well. What do folks think of this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T61-Laptop-C2D-2-0G-XP-64655ZU_W0QQitemZ250281364243QQihZ015QQcategoryZ177QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247 And beginning to customize a small Lenovo on their website, I came up with this: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/config.workflow:java-configure?x=x&sb=%3A00000025%3A00000169%3A I didn't finish customizing it - and there might be some changes I should consider (I didn't even think about service plans yet), but so far this is $1300 range. My business has picked up this summer, so maybe I could treat myself to this - but would still love opinions about how to specificially configure this. And in general if I should seriously consider going smaller. I did not yet look on ebay for the smaller thinkpads. And I haven't yet researched the smaller Toshiba's. Before I do that, I thought I'd wait to get some more guidance. Thanks so much. Lynn.

It is now being referred to as Libre office, this article touches on both the xmarks closing and the open office revolt Xmarks Sync Shuts Down, OpenOffice Revolt I am hoping that xmarks does release their code for open source(they are considering it) so that someone out there can jump in and create another great option based on their code.

I used Open Office instead of MS Office for quite a while. I found it to be pretty good for the most part. I had problems with formatting of large Word documents that had bullets and numbering on several pages but had pretty good luck with spreadsheets. One caveat is that you might have snags with password protected spreadsheets. They may have fixed that, but I remember there were compatibility issues with password protected spreadsheets at one time.