got it from that ultimate deal thing.

word, excel, and ppt are still hard to beat (just can't get used to any of these open source stuff)

I use Office, and specifically Word, Excel, OneNote and Outlook, which work surprisingly well together, for all of my professional work.

In my own opinion, the cloud alternatives are too slow, too unreliable (due to net connection issues), and too tricky to keep files properly maintained when using airplanes and other travel means that do not have full-time net connectivity.

If I still maintained an EVDO connection, I might have a different opinion, but that was just too costly -- and certainly a lot more expensive than a few Office licenses.

I use Office 2003 for most jobs, Office 2007 when I want to experiment, and cloud-based solutions exactly never, and I would add to Cuhulin's point that you can't 100% trust the file conversions, particularly for complex Word or PowerPoint documents.

I don't care for Outlook, using corporate solutions (Blackberry + Lotus Notes), but in order my most critical office apps are: OneNote, Word, Excel & PowerPoint.

I've moved entirely to Gmail ("pushed" by verizon to my Moto Q) and google calender (with GooSync to sync with my Moto Q). I had dabbled with openoffice.org for awhile, but it seems that Google Docs was adequate for what I needed to do. I just love computing on a cloud as I am in medical school, I am frequently in different hospitals all the time but will alway have access to a computer with internet. Since I'm mostly doing case write-ups and powerpoint presentations (Google Docs is great for collaboration), it suffices. Unfortunately I haven't found an alternative to OneNote and I still use that for note taking in my lectures. Luckily the University has a license and I essentially get it for "free".

I <3 Office 2007. One Note is a must for any student. Outlook keeps my life organized and I'm using Word right now to type up a brief. I love how everything works together.

The only current Office program I use as my favorite in its category is PowerPoint. I also use Office FrontPage (now discontinued) and Office PhotoDraw (now discontinued) as favorite programs in their category. I use Office Word if someone sends me a document and insists on using Track Changes, or if I need to print something out (rare). I use Excel once a year. I never install others such as Outlook.

First, if what you want in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook (which are probably the 4 most common office applications) then Office Standard 2007 is available for $199.

First I'd just like to point out the obvious difference in interface. I know opinions are mixed about the Office Ribbon, but I immediately found it so intuitive and when I work in Open Office and even Office 2003, I literally get frustrated at the interface. I refuse to go back to anything else.

Word is probably the most replaceable of the office suite, since most people just need a blank page and some text formatting tools. But I still find myself using Word over any other. The built in dictionary and thesaurus are indispensible to me. Likewise, the bibliography function is a godsend. Also, the page formatting options are finally easy to use and up front, rather than buried 4 menus deep. Finally the equation editor is the best of any WYSIWYG editor out there.

So while the other options provide basic functions, Word manages to pack in the features while providing an interface which empowers users to use them all. My classmates think I’m some kind of design genius because I use word templates to make my reports look nice.

Then there’s Excel. The thing with spreadsheets is people either need a simple one for a quick chart or a quick function, or a complete set of features to cater to their specific needs. Most spreadsheet applications provide only the most basic features. While something like Google Spreadsheet has a nice set of functions, it can’t do something as simple as run a regression, let alone what-if analysis.

With respect to power point, I know a lot of people prefer Keynote, but I’ve never used it. It does look like a great alternative, but of the presentation applications available for windows, Power point is the best. Many people today design horrendous presentations which amount to little more than slides of bullet lists. If you want to give a good presentation, you need to convert these bullet lists into visuals which motivate a position, and Power Point smart objects make that incredibly easy.

So, in all even though the alternatives to Office are free or open or online, I would never use them over Office to get my work done, because they don’t have the features I need, and the features they have aren’t good enough. Maybe some people are fine with the basics, but if I had to pay the $199 for office, I would.

Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are requirements at work, but I choose to use those plus OneNote for personal use. I could do without PowerPoint, but I've built too much skill in Excel to dump it, inking in Word has come in handy on those occasions I use the app, TEO makes Outlook invaluable, and OneNote is, well, it's OneNote. Ink has locked me in to MS Office.

I always tried to avoid getting sucked into the expensive Microsoft Office habit, which can run over a thousand dollars in a decade of computing. I have been fine with cloud e-mail and Open Office. However, when I bought my Fujitsu S510 scanner, with Abbyy FineReader that converts scanned material to MS Office docs (superbly, I should add), I bit for the $130 Home and Student Edition.

It seems a judgment call. Do you want to save time with a nicely integrated package? Or save money. For my usage, the time saving is negligible, but for power users, it may be worth the thousands they spend for MS Office over time.

Onenote and Word, I use often. I would like to use something other than outlook to sync with my axim and blackjack. I have gotten to despise activesync for all the glitches over the years. I like Thunderbird and gmail but miss inking in an email application.

Yep, still using MS. I used to be a WordPerfect fan but Office had a couple of things that were harder to do in WP and now I am hooked. OpenOffice is a viable alternative for Word Processing but not for PowerPoint. And while Evernote is a neat idea, and Corel's lightning might be - haven't tried it yet - nothing beats OneNote 2007 yet. I use exchange and Outlook is the easiest way to do that since my exchange host gives it away. I can use the student version of office since I have kids in school. And I get OL free.

You can't beat office's ability to ink on excel and word files. tap that review and you can ink to your hearts content. I use publisher a ton. and of course, one note and outlook. i get GBM to go straight to outlook so i never miss a beat.

You get what you pay for with business apps and there are good deals to be had if you shop around. I'm sure Mr Scoble has his blogging needs satisfied by Google Docs but I won't be running complex financial analysis, energy analysis or client reports on it anytime soon.

MS Office will continue in its revenue stronghold of business. The home user on the other hand may well look at alternatives - and to be honest MS Office is complete overkill for the majority of home users, who, if they have a copy, are unlikely to have paid for it.

As a .NET developer, I'm firmly entrenched in the MS arena. OneNote saves all of my notes, and Outlook is indispensible in a corporate environment. If your company is with the Home Use program, Office is very affordable.

Home users usually do not require the functionality of Office 2007. Pick up a copy of 97, and you're probably happy.

Why worry about cloud computing when "Works" comes installed on most new PC's, and does what most home users need.

I am still running and will continue to run Office until it is no longer the business standard AND there are viable alternatives that don't require me to depend on Internet access and cumbersome/antiquated UI's to operate.

Office 2007 is by far the most intuitive and flexible product released by Microsoft in a long time. I disagree whole-heartedly with their decision to remove Outlook from several lesser-priced bundles, but that said the rest of the Office suite continues to be a valuable enough asset to warrant the added cost.

I use Office because my office uses Office. I don't use Outlook because they use Lotus Notes.

Given the choice, I would move to Open Office rather than web based solutions for document manipulation (and that is what I use at home). The cloud is still not as responsive as even my UMPC, much less my desktop. For the professional who generates pages and pages of documents, I think this will always be the case.

Ultimately the Google Docs (or any other document site) is just another version of client-server computing which is, itself, just another version of green screen computing. The server may have changed, connectivity may be easier (although no more ubiquitous (assuming your office server is set up to facilitate it). All of these models are now confined to niches because for general purposes you can do better with local software.

The big advantage of the cloud is synchronization and concurrent collaboration. However, in my work (and in many professional environments) versioning via email is the preferred method of collaboration. Synchronization is still an advantage but one which is just as well served by backups or briefcases in the cloud.

PIM and email functions are a different issue. Here the cloud model can work assuming that it can synchronize to your personal devices. Synchronization is more important than functionality.

Yes I use Office2007. I even paid for it as an oem install. Most everyone I know uses it whether they bought it or were "gifted" it. Outlook is a must have especially with the add on CRM customization I have. Word is a must have and beats any other writing program. Excel does not have any decent competitor, not with the integration with the rest of office.
I tried Open Office before but found several features I need lacking. I do use Google Docs for web publishing but Google spreadsheet doesn't have near the range of formulas Excel does (that I am aware of). I also use Gmail via google apps for domains but see it as more a replacement for Horde or similar hosted email.
Then there's publisher but I didn't spring for it in Office2007. Word will suffice for my needs.

You cannot knock the one product that Microsoft got right and continues to improve.

I use MS office. Open office chokes and dies doing certain things. I use 2007 currently because I like it better than 2003. For home I just buy home and student which supplies 3 computers (which is a great buy), and for work we use enterprise office. Any computer next semester (I work at a small college) that is fast enough for office 2007 will have 2007 installed. It's been requested by the staff and faculty. We have open office installed on all of the computer and it's just not something that many of our users like.

(yes we have education volume licensing, which is more than a reasonable)

TOTALLY OFF TOPIC
I got my refurbished Latitude XT, I am impressed. It's a very sweet tablet.

My college has a license, so for class work, I get Office Enterprise Edition free. I actually use OneNote, Word, PowerPoint and a bit of Excel (only enough to do a rudimentary grade sheet.)

I prefer my email in the cloud. I use Gmail, Google Calendar and Remember the Milk, with the plug-ins that show RTM with my Gmail and my Calendar. RTM will send SMS reminders to my plain old cell phone. No Windows Mobile required. I like that. I also like the interface of Gmail better than Outlook these days.

Everything else in the Enterprise package is overkill for me. I can't find anybody on campus using Groove, for example.

$450 and all he needs is Outlook? Office Basic comes with Outlook and is only $129 or so.
I still use Outlook, Excel and Word with gmail mixed in for email. I've tried Open Office on and off and there is always something missing that I need.

Last year I received Office 2007 Ultimate when I was a student (with unltd future use--I received a license) and have been using it ever since. I tried Open Office for a few months but couldn't get used to the programs. Ofc '07 fills all my needs for my personal, as well as, business use.

My other half was offered Office 2007 Enterprise for 200Kroner (that's nothing) and I said if you can get it in English then buy it. She could and she did. On a desktop it's great but on my OQO I much prefer Office 2003. To be honest, if it wasn't for Onenote I'd probably look for a less bloated solution. Word seems to take up a lot of processor when you have a largish document open. I'd never use an online service though, the internet isn't a guaranteed always available option.

As a business owner I became fed up with the high cost of MS a few years back and gave Open Office a try. We have not looked back. Granted OO is a bit different from MS but not significantly. The cost benefits of using OO far outway the few legacy benefits of MS. We have been using Google Docs intermitently and like it but it does operate slowly and lacks ease of use.

MS will learn a hard lesson based on Vista and Office 2007 sales and reviews that people aren't going to shell for their upgrades.

Good comments here. I am not at all surprised to see so many people sticking with Office 2007. I use Office 2007 at work, a law firm environment, and I don't think any other Office Suite would provide the tools that are needed to get work done here. IMHO, OpenOffice is just doomed to be forever one step behind, and is going to have a difficult making inroads to the professional services enterprise.

In my "personal" life...as a geek...I am torn by the use of Google Docs and the use of Office. I really believe that the future of cloud computing, as it relates to these office suites, resides in the ability to keep information in synch through the cloud, not in actually putting the apps in the cloud. That said, I don't write many documents, and sharing in gDocs is just so easy. I have pretty good access to the internet. I also have an EEE PC and the Office tools just dont run well on it. Google Docs works fine. Today I am using Google docs for home stuff, but I am just as likely back using Office 2007 tomorrow.

I use MS Office in my professional environment. Thus the private use of MSO has a lot to do with a certain reluctance to go through the learning curve once again. Further more I believe even though the progress of web based productivity applications and open source software is astonishing, they are still technically inferior to the MS suite. But living in a world where 90% of users are only aware of 10% features, the level of sophistication reached by these applications combined with the free access/ license is setting a attractive incentive for a great number of users to move away from the predominant market leader.

Even for me the anytime, everywhere access approach of google seems luring. But I prefer to deal with the question of where and when I have access to my data on a more generic level, thus looking for a certain type of web storage for encrypted data and access to my home network via VPN respectively.

Oh yeah, I use Office. I live in Outlook and OneNote, but I use the rest, too. I love Excel, especially, but I also use Word daily, and Power Point and Visio on occasion.

Sadly, at work, Im forced to use Lotus Notes, the worst software ever written, period. I'd use cloud happs over Notes any day, if I could. Heck, I'd use a team of monks transcribing every document by hand, over Notes, if I could. I would rather get kicked in the nads once every morning than have to use Notes.

But I digress. Anyway, I use and like Office. Sorry about the rant. :)