Not MS Office

I bought a new computer. It did not come with MS Office and I do not wish to pay for it either monthly or upfront.
I have been using Apache OpenOffice for years now on the old machine.
To those who know better than I:
Is this still a good choice?
Is there a better choice?

PS: I consider myself a light, business user. That is to say that I will use these programs more to see spreadsheets sent to me more than use this to create spreadsheets. Same with using the Word equivalent. I use pretty much use zero else of the "Office" suite.

I like LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice). It is fully functional and works well. I don't have any MS Office and I interact/exchange docs with people who only have it - not many issues. They usually revolve around missing fonts or something.

Lately, for collaboration we have actually been using google docs for non-sensitive stuff with some success.

Google Docs. I haven't found anything yet that MS Office did that I can't do with Google Docs.

I've used Apache Open Office off and on in recent years. I'd say it's still a viable choice, and probably a good choice for you since you're used to it.

Libre has bascially replaced OpenOffice. It seems to be pretty actively maintained.

Libre office? I'll check it out.

Apache Open Office user here. Have not tried LibreOffice. If somebody tells me LibreOffice's database program actually works (I cannot get OpenOffice Base to work for the life of me) I might consider switching.

Google Docs or Libreoffice.

I'd lean towards Google docs.

+1 for LibreOffice. It's what I use on all my computers (even have it on my phone!)

If you really want MS Office, Check with your IT department at work to see if they have an EA agreement with MS. If they do you should have the ability for a "take home" license for $10. That's how I got the whole office 2016 suite on my home notebook.

In reply to bmw88rider:

That is excellent advice but since there is no way you would have know, I have attached a photo of the head of my IT and Security Depts.

In this photo his is likely diligently protecting us from such threats as squirrels, rabbits, kids on bikes and other various types of threats.

Look at that shaggy gray facial hair, he must be a Unix admin

LibreOffice.

I make lots of spreadsheets with MS Office that just won't work in Google docs. Their graphing tools are terrible.

Today's lunch meeting with demanding shareholder...

I think we had some compatibility problems with LibreOffice and the boys school using MS Word. As I recall, we had to be careful and make sure we saved things as RTF files, both ways, in order for them to be read.

Another possibility is an older version of MS Office. The whole Office suite is darn compatible with itself up and down the time line. You can find older versions for cheap if not free.

I've never had a major compatibility problem between MS Office and Libreoffice, at least for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files (I hardly work with any others). The most common problem is that bullets don't look exactly the same.

Ohhh....So he is an Austin based IT Professional.

I use the google suite for my android products with great success. It's just a matter how much you really use. I couldn't use google sheets for some of data analytics that I have to do for work but for some of the more basic functions it works just great.

open office for home. I have had compatibility issues trying to print large format posters - starting with a MS PPT source document, the open office presentation program couldn't convert to pdf and maintain print quality. Sort of a 1 in a million issue. Other than that - a few compatibility things like keeping headers and footers. I've never really looked into libre since the open office mostly works for me or any cloud-based products since I want to own and control my own work.

Okay, I'm gonna try Libre for starters based on good reviews and popularity here. If not happy, I'll try the others or go back to Apache.

Thanks mucho.

Libre Office. I find it works fine with MS Office files.

I use open office across all devices, have about 12 years now. If you're used to it, use it.

I've started using LibreOffice at home. Impress plays PowerPoint files, but the spacing is off.