Question about MS Word alternatives

[norwich36]

I am contemplating buying a netbook, mainly to access the internet when I'm travelling, but I also have delusions of doing work on it while travelling. Most of the ones I'm looking at don't have CD/DVD drives on them, which means I don't have a mechanism for uploading work-supplied probably not-licensed-for-home-use Word on them, and it's not preloaded on any of the ones I've looked at.

So my question is for people using Open Office/ Google docs/ other free wordprocessing programs that are downloadable: how compatible are they with Word? Because if part of the point of this is to do work-related writing while travelling, I need something that easily transfers Word docs to the freeware and vice-versa without too much annoying loss-of-formatting, etc, since there's no way I can switch to Open Office on my work computer. Anyone have experience with this? Suggestions?

Comments

[isilweth.livejournal.com]

I use google docs and although it doesn't have all the functions word does (such as macros), it can open word docs and edit them and save them again as word docs.

I used to use open office and was not as happy with it. It just wasn't as easy to use and if it was compatible, I couldn't figure it out.

If you want to invest in an excellent word processing program, I can't recommend Word Perfect highly enough. I LOVE IT and wish I had on my current comp. In the meantime, Google docs works for me, though.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Good to know about open office. And I have used google docs before when people sent them to me, so I might go with that.

I used wordperfect from 1986 to 2001, and still think it's a superior program, but for work I must use Word, and I know from bitter experience that conversion back and forth takes way too much hand editing.