Thanks all for the comments!

Weird though that MS Office apps keep crashing on me. But as it seems I'm the only one with such experience, so it must be possile to run it smoothly. I even reinstalled Office XP, to make sure Assistant wouldn't be installed, but without any change.

Maybe CXOffice 3.0 will perform better.

I am a beta tester for crossover office and just love that thingy.

I have been testing Lotus Notes for it and it moved me some long time ago to abandon windows and move my laptop completely to linux, did not regrett it one bit yet.

I never used Office much with it (Open Office does everything I need), but that it keeps crashing on you is not normal. I can't remember when it crashed on me last time (so it is a LONG LONG time ago).
As a rule of thumb with these things is usualy: dont choose the newest and coolest. Office XP and 2003 is in my opinion no smart choice, since in my opinion it does not include any features that 2k did not have already and you absolutely need (or are there some? Which ones do you need of them?)
Judging from MS intentions and policies I suspect that Office 2003 and XP will give more trouble in terms of deactivation (a journalist wrote about his experience in a plane when Office dutyfully assumed that he was a pirate and deactivate itself, refusing to write an article with him and asking for the original CD, which was on the ground and 2500 miles west)
Have had time to prepare for the linux threat, MS might also have implemented some safeguards that will implement some "stumbling stones" for running on linux. This is just assuming, but as I know Microsoft....

If you can, I would try Office 2k, since that one will surely work splendid on Crossover Office (they have all gold-ratings, since throughly tested)

What I love most about running windows programs on linux:
1. No more DUMB reboots, how I hate this on windows. EVERYTHING seems to still require a reboot, even on XP. I thought they improved it...Dream on. And good for linux ;-)
2. Windows reboot on crossover office take 5 seconds and you DO NOT HAVE to close any of your linux programms. ;-)
3. Transparency: You know which programms are running. In windows there is no way of understanding the cryptic obscure programm names in task manager.

As said by a person before, crossover office is running with a user and no root, so security is highly improved. Programs can use mailing though, which is port 25, which is, ... anyone?... a restricted root port, which means that somehow, windows programs still seem to have more controll that they should have. Windows flaky security is leaking in here...
So, my assumption is that a virus could also use this to send mails. You can switch off all windows programs by reseting crossover office though...

I think your crashes might be related to your distribution AND/OR your kernel (maybe even more your kernel, remember, 2.6 is still kind of unstable). I am using RedHat 9 and have no problems with it.

And yes, as said before, the trial version is the same as when you buy it. Try it out.

Hope I shed some light on it....

Markus

Thanks for the extensive views on the topic!

I can tell that all the comments have convinced me to purchase CXOffice! And even better, yesterday I tried the latest trial version 3.0 and installed it as user instead of root, and all the crashing stuff is over! (so now I still don't know if it was the version or installation)

For the beta tester: I have kernel 2.6.4 and the crashes mostly happened when closing the application. It then gave me the dreaded "blablabla sorry for the inconvenience but MS Word will have to restart etc..."

But now those days are over, and I am one step closer to removing Windose from my laptop!!!

Happy Slacking again!

Cheers, Leon.