Office is fine, but there really is no reason to upgrade to a newer versions. We license Office, so we are buying 2007 because that is our only option. We run 2003 and have no intention of upgrading the baseline for a couple of iterations in the suite. This is the problem that MS is feeling in its core divisions. There really is no cost justification to upgrade. The incremental increase in functionality is not worth the expense. The only concern is when the EOL a product and there is potential for a security related incident. I agree with the OP, the free products really can't compete with Office.

Agree with Squil
Office 2007 is the most intuitive and best to use office pack on the market. End of story.
Of course, if you don't want to pay for it, you can pirate it or get a free one, and it is actually a difficult choice, since 2007 is so much better than the rest of the offerings on the market.
I use OpenOffice.org though, I've been trying to cut down on piracy...

I use to use OO.o but I switched to MO 2007 since it just seemed more natural on Vista and I love the GUI.

I don't understand why anyone would pay for Office. It's so ridiculously over-priced. Either pirate it or use one of the free alternatives listed above.

Maybe because the ability for my grandma to use Office without calling me (almost!) is far far better than a BluRay and an experimental chip? I mean... just maybe... you know?

Too much scropting... sorry... I need to lay it off.

I use OpenOffice. Great functionality, great price.

See this just isn't true, I mean the full retail version of Office Professional is not cheap at US$499, but Office Home is only US$149 which is enough for most people. OEM prices for when you buy it with a system are even cheaper again.

In comparison Adobe 9 Professional, which is just a program for creating PDF documents is US$449

Business grade applications are always expensive because businesses are there to make money and the software helps them do that. That's why other applications like AutoCAD, Adobe Creative Suite, even Microsoft Project cost in the THOUSANDS, not hundreds.

Compare Office Pro which has Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Access, Accounting Express & Publisher, for $499 to Acrobat 9 Pro for $449. Even Office Home which has Word, Excel, Powerpoint & OneNote for $149 to Acrobat Standard which is $299.

Just because there are cheap and free alternatives if you are willing to make sacrifices to functionality, doesn't make Office overpriced.

agreed office=king. M$ rules this market. Whether you like it or not no one can truly compete with M$. Yet?

The new iWork can save files in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint format along with their own file formats. I thought that was pretty cool.