[drats]

Other than compatibility with other people I don't find MS Office has many advantages, but I will concede it is better designed, especially when you have to pay for it. Compatibility is the huge killer argument for Office and will remain so for some time.

All that said, for high school level essays, slides, spreadsheets, where you are not really interfacing with government or businesses, then the argument for OpenOffice is overwhelming. Even more so when your government can't even afford to borrow on the open markets. I.e. no private investor in the entire world thinks you are credibly going to pay back what you borrow. In that case you have to go to political allies who are prepared to shoulder the costs, for political and not economic reasons, and it might be a good idea to take the 90%-as-good free office package for your school students to contain costs.

[jstalin]

For high school, maybe, but even the simple charts and graphs in Excel are visually pleasing. In openoffice, or even google docs, they're hideous and usually unworkable.