I have never seen Open Office offered in firefox install has anyone? I have seen it offered in some other updates like java and flash in the past. also make sure when you do firefox updates and the browser reopens to a new page other than your homepage to close it and reopen it again because it only does that the first time to let you know that it did update properly it does not change the homepage the next time you reopen it will be to your usual home page. It will do the same thing if you had any updates for your add-ons it will open to that page to let you know the update was successful. If you did install Open office it will be listed in your add remove programs list in control panel.

There's another thread here that talks about Google Docs vs Open Office. I think your situation is one where Google Docs might be a good choice because it allows you both to work on the docs even though you're in separate places. If you're looking for ways to remotely access a computer, I've had good results using different versions of VNC. I think the last one I used was UltraVNC. There are some free conferencing programs. Here is a wikipedia article with a chart comparing some conferencing products (some free). One they didn't have listed is Yugma.

i finally installed oo 3.1 and it was able to open the spreadsheet. now getting 3.1 and getting it to work, well if you are interested that was a real interesting adventure! in case this helps anyone else i'll copy and paste it here. i posted this at the oo bullentin board, see link below. this is the final resolution: this is going to be difficult to explain but i have solved the problem and i have to admit i am impressed that i was able to do this! here's what i did after i posted this - 1st, instead of going to the web i opted to open an application i had. i clicked on oo 2.4 and it opened a window. from there i clicked on a link to do the download, 150 mb! it took about 45 minutes. but i still had ver 2.4. i realized i had to open the installation file that mozilla was showing me and when i double clicked the downloaded .exe or php file it started the install and i knew i was on the right track. that took a good 20 minutes and i told it to remove the 2.4 stuff. when done the icon for oo 3.1 writer on my task bar did not work! there are now 4 icons the 3.1 version put on my desktop. only the "oo org" 3.1 icon would launch oo and it was 3.1 so i could now use oo. but the other icons for impress, calc, writer and the task bar icon for writer all failed to work, they'd launch a window saying that it could not find "swriter.exe", trust me this is pretty confusing stuff for me! so i could get to oo 3.1 but only using the icon for "oo org" 3.1 so i right clicked the 3 icons that gave the swriter.exe error and looked at the properties. all 3 were going to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 2.4\program which shouldn't exist as i told it to remove the 2.4 software but it did not put the correct target address for the 3.1 programs and i recognized this as screwy. i looked at the properties for the 1 icon that would launch oo 3.1 and the target was exactly the same as the 3 icon's targets that were 2.4 but it had 3 in the address - C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program\swriter.exe so i changed the target in the icons that generated the can't find swriter.exe error. by doing that the 3 icons on the desktop went from being a white backround to bright colors and a larger icon! low and behold when i click on those 3 and the icon for the writer on the task bar each one launches the correct software! like i said, i am impressed i found this and was able to fix it, i can't imagine anyone would figure this out it just seems too cryptic! heck i even was able to open the spread sheet that started all this! i hate messing with stuff, i want it to work. i am not all that pc literate and i worry that if i change anything i'll mess something up. i have to admit this was NOT easy to do. oo does NOT provide a correct download/installation. if this happened to me it must be happening to everyone. so not only did this process fail to remove some 2.4 files but it loaded the incorrect target address for 3 icons (using the C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 2.4\program\swriter.exe address)! makes me wonder..... Here is a link that might be useful: open office setup trouble shooting forum

I think Wordpad, also a free inclusion with Windows, is a bit more useful as a simple, no frills typing program. Notepad is very limited and rudimentary. Be careful describing a saved Notepad file as being a "document". In common usage any text file is a "document", no matter what program produced it and no matter what format it's in. Notepad will only save files in .txt format, which is arguably just as if a character-based DOS text file. Wordpad does more (including .rtf, rich text files, for using basic formatting and other text effects) and some others. The more elaborate programs offer even more choices. Google Docs as mentioned above, a free online offering, offers a good balance of functionality and simplicity. All these programs offer interoperability of saved files with other programs and other platforms, if that matters. And from all of these, it's simple to cut and paste text into an email or workspace of another program.