Mad,

You probably won't need Jarte if your used to working with Word but Jarte is great because it's so simple to use. Open office org. is basically a copy of Word, Excel, Base, etc. Will handle and open all windows based spreadsheets and will work with Excel files. [basically you have a free copy of Excel here]. There is also Draw for flowcharts, logos etc. Impress for presentations and Calc for mathematical work including the ability to use advanced maths symbols etc.

Download everything to disk and open them to set them up on your PC from there, so that next time you have a puter crash your up and running again in no time.

Cheers.