I've long thought that the charts in OOo Calc were the only reason to have to use Excel. I spend 99 percent of my computing time using Linux though, so I got on the OOo bandwagon long ago and I found it relatively easy to overcome the charting deficit. My work involves a lot of modeling using Fortran and I use Grace to plot my results. I use Bash scripts to setup my calculations, sort the data, and then setup and run Grace in batch mode. Grace will output .jpg files which I insert into OOo Writer to produce my documentation. For me, it all works great, and the Grace plots are way beyond anything you could hope to produce with Excel. Prior to running my calculations, I use OOo Calc to generate my initial values and that involves a lot of matrix manipulation which Calc handles very nicely. I have written papers using OOo that I just couldn't get the formatting right using Word, and OOo also offers the luxury of exporting the finished product directly to PDF. I have recently begun to learn Tex, however, because word processors just aren't up to the task of producing a really well formatted paper. The fact of the matter is, for my needs, OOo does not lack anything, and I can get the job done. Being a Linux user, I had to adapt my methodology along the way to utilize the tools that were available to me, but I certainly do not feel I am at any disadvantage compared to windows users who have Office at their disposal. I encourage my students to use OOo, and my kids use OOo running under windows at home. Bottom line: OOo and Office offer similar capabilities, if you can use Office then you can use OOo, and, perhaps most importantly, OOo runs under Linux.