[X Newbies] Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[marina]

Thank you Mark, Bruce, Chas and Vincent for your helpful suggestions. 
After "being away" for a few years, it's really good to find that the 
Mac community is still the nicest and the most helpful!

Bruce wrote:

  >You may need to buy Word to reproduce these features; can you do without
  >Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage?

I am quite happy with the old ClarisWorks/AppleWorks spreadsheet, and 
assuming the new version is not worse, I don't think I'll ever need 
the fanciest features Excel seem to offer.
PowerPoint... errr, I refuse to use :-), and I never heard of 
Entourage - which makes me think I won't miss it.

As I said, and I apologise if my question wasn't clear, my main 
concern is the word processor - I have a couple more questions, if I 
may:

1. Where can I purchase a CD distribution of OOo for Mac?
I have spent quite some time checking the links from 
<http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/>, but it looks like those 
(few) links that work, and do point to OOo-related sites, only offer 
Unix/Linux/Windoz versions. Or well, if the answer is there... I 
haven't been able to find it yet.

2. Will I be able to copy and paste seamlessly from OOo/X11 (or 
Classic apps) to native OS X applications, and vice versa?

Also, Chas - thank you for mentioning Think Free. I had been 
wondering about this, too.

And finally, Vincent wrote:
  >I agree with Charles' recommendation. Your list of must-have features,
  >even if supported by a competitor to Word, would also lead to a concern
  >about the portability of an alternate product's implementation. Would
  >all the elements be preserved when the files are opened by a Word user?

This is the question... and I was hoping someone here might have the answer :-)
I have also taken on board the suggestion someone made to go and test 
AppleWorks at an Apple store, but I doubt this will allow me to find 
out.
In general, by the time my (wp) files are complex enough to require 
perfect translation into Word files, I am hoping I'll be able to 
simply save as PDF, and share this format with Windoz users. And I 
understand AppleWorks saves as PDF from the print preview - is this 
correct?

I truly feel I have already given enough money to MS for the rest of 
my life, and I don't mind going to some trouble to avoid giving them 
more - if only there are ways... :-)

Many thanks again,
marina