For the price of Vista, it should have come with Works built in. It should also have been modified to allow the opening and viewing, but not necessarily editing, of all MSOffice docs.

As it stands, most people's word processing needs could be covered by Wordpad.

I'm a regular OpenOffice user and I love it. Doesn't nag me or try to hold my hand like Word did.

Frankly I dont like to use word/works. They just annoy me. OO FTW!

I've used Works for 7 or 8 years now. I didn't want to spend the money for Office since I only needed a word processing program for letter writing and a basic spreadsheet for various household records. For personal home use it's suited me perfectly well. I recently tried OpenOffice and managed to eventually get a letter written in an acceptable format. But then I couldn't find an envelope addressing feature. Works has custom formats for a variety of envelope sizes that makes addressing an envelope a snap. That's just one example. I could list others as to why I prefer a basic, easy to use program like Works over some get-what-you-pay-for group of programs like OpenOffice.

I wonder if programs like adaware and spybot will disable the ads?

That'd be funny.

Yeah, this is a winner.

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but I've never liked OpenOffice. Besides being terribly slow, it just felt akward. I'd take Abiword over OO Writer anytime.

OO.

If you are using "Works" and not OO something is wrong with you.

If it's only $40 anyway, the ad-supported version isn't that much of a saving.. quite apart from OO.org.

whats the point if no one uses works anymore?

Hmm, let me see....ad supported MS Works or Open Office? I think I'll take Open Office, thanks.