emulators?

here are 3 options,

WINE - www.winehq.com -Free
WINEX - www.transgaming.com -costs very little
VMware - www.vmware.com - costs a lot

as korp said, each has their benefits. Hope that helps.

wine works fine on office products.

btw, lindows is not an emulator......hence lindowsOS..... I will stop right there.

I would go with wine.

Lindows sucks ass, costs WAY to much money, and it doesn't even load Office properly right now.

You could always look into something like openoffice to replace MS office also. Although if this is a work machine, that may not work.

does openoffice open access databases and word documents?

No database program, that's left to Sun StarOffice which they say will be under $100.

Try reading the review.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002May11.html

www.openoffice.org

unless you get staroffice 5.2 which was pigware, its free though....