Mathew posted some hints on configuring Open Office. He has a couple of good points, but I haven’t decided if I agree with point 5 yet. I like to see my bullet points shaded as the default bullet is quite small and can be mistaken for a full stop (AFAIR).
My Dad didn’t like the page boundary around each page, but after using Word 97 here at work I found it infuriating trying to find the first line of a page. I usually backspaced through too many lines by 1 or 2 lines.