Our library system uses an open source clone of Microsoft Office called Open Office. While I fully respect the cost savings and distributed nature of that product (it is available on every public PC in our system!), I think it is overly complicated for what most users need to accomplish. Based on my own daily observations, the usual task customers need word processing for is creating a one to three page document or resume that they may or may not save permanently after printing it.
I think linking to an online productivity site that affords saving of documents and is accessible from any Internet linked PC is a better idea. The interface is simpler, but hardly incomplete,and it is less software to maintain on our machines. There are no incompatibility issues, and a student with Internet access can go to school and recover their documents online. That is efficiency.
I won't dwell on the obvious benefits of sharing documents across a group and communal editing. We have tried that over the past year and it works. Ya gotta love this stuff!
See the post for "Thing 18.5" that concludes my first Zoho experience after I created my account.
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