[liedra]

Having tried to use Open/Libre Office as a MS Office replacement I can say it's definitely not on par with MS Office (sadly). So many little things that you take for granted on MS Office either aren't implemented or are incompatible with others who are using MS Office. For collaborative documents in an academic setting, using track changes, extensive bibliographies, stupidly large wordcounts etc., it's far, far easier to just use MS Office. I'd love to move these people on to google docs or something but old habits die hard in academia - emailed word documents is still where it's at.

As for Outlook - while I've set up my home computer to not use it, for most it's just easier to use it. Convenience has a lot going for it. For non-tech-savvy people it's also a lot easier, since then calls to tech support at work will actually get you help. :)