Excel is limited to 65K rows, OpenOffice, last I checked was limited to 32K. That's not doing everything Office does. Plus its word processor looks bad. Really really bad.

Apple has their own word processor out now as part of iWork. Too bad they don't have a spreadsheet with decent row support (65K is still pathetic). It's not free, but it also doesn't break the bank. Plus, you don't get stuck using (bad) "free" software. There are other costs beyond sticker price.

There are also free or low cost reader applications to work with Word files (I don't know about Excel..)

Bruno