[Skybird]

Depends on what you need. if you have diverse and highly professional demands, Open Office. If you can afford a bit more relaxed attitude, I would prefer Libre Office (which I only know under Linux).

Open Office sometimes had me endlessly searching for a function.

Anyhow, for ordinary text editing, both get the job done - with flying colours. Personally, I tend towards Libre Office, but I cannot give you a killer argument for that. I also prefer the bit more colpourful presentation and style (talking about the Linux version, I do not know whether the Windows version is and looks different).

Last Microsoft stuff I tried in these regards, was edition 2010. Never liked their new menu style, and until today see no reason for myself why I would need to fall back to Microsoft, regarding typical office software. I liked the older versions of Word much better.