Looking for Excel alternative

I'm looking for a freeware (or reasonably priced shareware) spreadsheet program. I need it to be compatible with Excel files. I'll use it to access Excel files and do basic spreadsheet functions from my home computer.

I'm antsy about OpenOffice, because I tried it twice and found it to cause system problems both times.

Any suggestions?

I think OpenOffice is probably going to be your best bet for anything very serious. If you are doing pretty basic stuff then Google Docs's spreadsheet may work well enough for you. One problem I've had with google docs spreadsheets is I havent' figured out how to edit a 'forumula' like if I have =G3*H3 in a cell, I can't seem to change that forumula, and thats pretty critical for the stuff I do. I'm sure it can be done though.

Thanks, SNGX. Since posting this thread, I decided to give OpenOffice another shot. I turned off my antivirus and firewall during the install (I don't think I did so the other times), and that seems to be the difference. So far, it's running okay.