OpenOffice

As part of my 'useful free software packages for a fresh PC install' CD that I have made and have given to a few friends, I included the OpenOffice package as an alternative to MS Office. I have just discovered a useful feature of OpenOffice which makes it even more essential. At work the other day a client sent us a MS Excel file which had been created in the latest version of Excel, and as you may know sneaky MS have added digits to their file extensions so that older versions cannot open the files. For instance, the file we were sent had the extension 'xlsx' instead of the old 'xls' extension.
As we have no plans to buy the latest version of MS Office, eventually I fired up OpenOffice which was immediately able to open the file. Not only tha,t but I could export the file as an older format so that my colleagues in the office who didn't have OpenOffice could open the sheet in their older version of Excel - another triumph for 'Open Source'.
This got me thinking, why would anyone even bother with these expensive software packages when free versions are so much more flexible??
For those who don't know, OpenOffice is a freely downloadable suite of programs that replicate all the functionality of MS Office and will seemlessly import most MS Office documents whether they be WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT etc... there are actually six programs in the suite including drawing and database programs.