Here's some good news. Hewlett-Packard's announcement apparently follows Dell's decision to drop Microsoft Works in favor of WordPerfect. However, it's not clear, here, whether HP is mimicking Dell, or completely dropping MS. And what'll happen once the HP Compaq merger goes through?

Still, based upon my experience with students, the average computer user will use Corel if it's on the machine.

One interesting note that comes from the Slashdot post where I found this reference. Works Suite 2002 includes Word 2002.