My desktop can not read ODT docs and need an XP emulator

I have just bought an Acer Netbook (little laptop) for my son to use in college. It has Writer installed on it and to print I thought it would be ok to transfer files on the memory stick to desktop computer (also to have backup files stored elsewhere),

My desktop however can not read the ODT documents and I dont know how to convert them to Word XP. The tech guys at Currys said I need to download XP Emulator - but not being that great at anything computers, I have not been able to find this on the Linux site where they told me to get it from. Can anyone talk me through this - need step by step basic instuctions please.

Yup, you have two options;

a. Download OpenOffice for windows from openoffice.org (for free) and use this instead of Word on your Windows PC

b. When you save your documents on the Netbook, you will see there is a choice of output format which defaults to .odt .. simply select one of the Windows formats and it will save it as a ".doc" , which will be readable by Word.

hth