John wrote:
I am needing to get a laptop as I need to go away to do some work.

Has anyone got real experience of "Open Office" as an alternative to
Microsoft? It will make a difference to how I spend my budget if I don't buy
"Office". On my desktop I use Office 2003 with Outlook - I will think of
this as my datum.

I'll just throw in my opinion. I use Open Office all the time (as I use
a Linux system I don't have the choice of using MS Office!). It works
fine, I've not found anything I can't do. The main limitation is that
very complex documents in Microsoft formats can get their formatting
mangled - but this can happen between different versions of Microsoft
Office too. There's no equivalent to Outlook, if you want
calendaring/mail you could try Evolution - it's supposed to integrate
with Exchange but I've never tried to do that.

I would suggest you try it - it won't cost you anything more than a bit
of time if you don't like it.