LibreOffice will usually read MS Word documents just fine. Occasionally, there may be some formatting issues when reading MS Office documents in LibreOffice or when exporting LibreOffice documents to MS Office file types.
I've pretty much completely abandoned Office 2010 on my Win 7 machines (I just haven't uninstalled it yet) and I'm using LibreOffice exclusively now. I'm still learning how to better use it but, then again, I was still learning how to use Office 2010 after using it for six or seven years.
LibreOffice is free so it wouldn't cost you anything to download and install it to see if it will meet your needs. There is a little bit of a learning curve so give it chance. Feel free to ask questions here.
You say 'microsoft word documents'. However, this may mean a couple of very different file formats. Which is yours?