I used to hate MS Word with passion. I felt that OOo was the mucch better alternative. After all, it could handle a few hundred pages with images, which MS Word

I used to hate MS Word with passion. I felt that OOo was the mucch better alternative. After all, it could handle a few hundred pages with images, which MS Word could not. But, the new file formats changed that. And with Office 2007, MS rethought the whole UI and made features increadibly discoverabke and visceral. It honestly is a joy to use--and on the Mac, too! To me, the Ribbon UI represents the next step in desktop UI: No menu bar, easy discoverability of features, direct feedback on most actions, very few breakout windows. OOo feels antique and clunky by comparison. So much so in fact, that I generally prefer to use Google Docs over OOo, just because it looks cleaner. By the way, have a look at [The Story of the Ribbon](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story...), a brilliant talk about how the new Office UI came into being. But the final nail in OOo's coffin are the templates. Seriously, both Apple Pages and MS Word provide very nice-looking, professional templates that make it hard to make a document look terrible. In contrast, OOo has very basic tmplates that are guaranteed to look boring unless you change them. Libre Office may be a chance to get these things straight. Start with good, professional templates, then overhaul the UI to something more practical. By all means, take inspiration from MS Office and Apple iWork. If they manage this, at least to some degree, this can be a winner. And I will donate money for that cause right now. But my hopes are small...