It doesn't have to clone Excel or Word exactly and that is not it's aim, though it does aim to be able to read and write MS office documents. For most purposes OO will do just fine. The major exception is complex applications in Excel using VB. If you are doing that you need to use MS Office. Some OO deployments: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments
more free web based goodies. this one is a flow chart drawing app. http://www.cumulatelabs.com/draw/draw.html?release=0.4.7
The text editor is barely good enough to keep a diary or some notes. It keeps resizing my fonts for no reason, etc. It's a toy at this point but the funny thing is I love it. Any computer, any time, anywhere, I can open my documents. No CD's, no thumb drive, no version control problems from one computer to the next... it is the future for me. I really wish they would replace that editor with something serious soon.