with all of the crap microsoft have forced onto their software of late i've given office the flick and going over to mozilla.
installed thunderbird with the lightning add-on and imported all of my old outlook emails/adresses etc without an issue.
thunderbird is free!!!!!!!!!!! and has everything outlook has. 
will be trying open office over the next week or so.
5 million thumbs up to mozilla.
Now this is something I definitely agree with you on!!!!
I've been using thunderbird and firefox for many years.
Open Office is good, but be careful of saving any MSoffice generated stuff, it may not end up quite the way you'd like.
I keep excel temperature records of this passive solar house, if I save with open office, the chart format is quite different.
While you're experimenting with open source software, try the "Gimp" for photo editing, to my non professional eyes it seems as powerful as photoshop. And for audio stuff "Audacity" is fantastic.
So...
Thunderbirds are go, ...then
Got to agree, have been using mozilla for years.
Like its stability etc
& besides .... it's not microsh^t
cheers decrepit,
i will keep an eye on open office, i have budget spreadsheets for home that i am keen to see remain as they are currently formated.
i've tried gimp and wasn't happy with it. could have been user error of course.
for audio i was using cubase which i have a registered version of. been a year since doing any recording though. not enough time. 
i haven't tried audacity.
p.s. i thought everyone agreed with me all of the time. 
pps. your water and electricity bill is inspirational.
