Redmond has announced that it plans to allow OEMs to pre-install the complete version of Office 2010 on new computers -- except it will be tweaked to run at a limited capacity. Instead of shipping PCs with the dreaded Microsoft Works or a 60-day trial of Office 2007, new systems will have an ad-supported version of Office 2010.

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What about an option for us computer builders? Those are new computers after all. Why leave us out in the cold?

I wonder how well it will fair against OpenOffice...

Not sure. I, personally, have no opinion on OpenOffice since I do not use it. My son, though, went crazy after using it for a couple of weeks and bought himself MS Office student edition. I'd never use a software with advertisement embedded - so, if the price is a factor, it's, probably, OpenOffice for me.

Redmond can do whatever they want. I won't be moving back from OpenOffice.

Yikes, I'll stick with Works for that basic stuff... and OpenOffice when I'm not in the mood to deal with BS.

I won't be switching back from Open Office whatever they do.

So far, Open Office doesn't work well with Office 2010 files for spreadsheets, power point, etc. But you can count on Open Office catching up fairly quickly.