I am a "techie" IBMer in the UK, and this is news to me. I must have also missed the press release about sacking 350,000 employees because last time I bothered looking I think there were about 370,000 of us, not 20,000!

The issue we are facing is the problem of format compatibility. You can certainly open and read .doc files fine, but if you want to send a polished and professional document to a client, no way in hell would you use open office to generate it! I noted that someone mentioned using PDF files above and this is a good alternative but can sometimes backfire slightly depending on the client relationship. If you send a client a read-only document (yes I know it can be edited if you really want), you run the risk of coming across as if somehow they cannot be trusted to have a mighty IBM-generated document which they might have the temerity to edit etc etc. Extreme example I know, but Office is so ingrained people start asking questions when you don't use it...

Maybe in a few more years we'll have a nice ODF compatibility on everything and we can finally put this to bed.