One thing Works doesn't seem to provide is automatic backup. TM Jr. mark 2, who wants to be a writer, lost several thousand words of his latest opus when a Works document became corrupt; no recovery was possible, whereas my experience with Word suggests to me that under similar circumstances a Word (with appropriate settings) document would have been recoverable.
OpenOffice seems to have automatic backup capabilities, much like Word. It seems a bit slow starting up - this may be related to its being written in an interpreted language (Python) - but once running, works fine on my Dell Inspiron 1150.