There are two major free Office Suite Zoho Office (zoho.com) and Google Documents (docs.google.com) that I am aware of.  Both are competent suites but they have limited functionality. Google Documents includes a word Processor, spreadsheet and presentation application.  Zoho has the same as well as a number of other applications including an organizer, invoices, and CRM. The office applications are free but some of their other applications are subscription based.

Having worked extensively with the Google Applications, my general feeling is that it is good for basic word processing and spreadsheets, but if you are interested in slightly more sophisticated formatting, you will be disappointed.   Google Does not allow you to create columns, and embedded table formatting is quite limited. 

I’ve looked at Zoho as well, and tried some basic formatting on it as well and came to the same conclusion. While the tables have more formatting options, it also doesn’t support columns. Overall, I think that Zoho has better features than google, and its worth a look.

While I don’t do the most sophisticated formatting on my documents, I do like to have a certain level of features,  and I don’t feel that either of these free suites will suite meet my needs. If you choose to use them for your primary office application make sure that they will do what you need before you throw away your PC based software. I think I’ll stick with OpenOffice for now.

If you know of any other suites, please feel free to let me know in the comments.