"Depends on your applications I guess..."
I'm running Excel 2010 (32 bit) under Wine. What has Open Office to do with this? Dunno if complex macros run; I don't use them. But if I did and they were I'd run Excel in a VM. If your users need retraining to double-click an icon on the desktop and single click the Menu* button and choose from the flyout menus then they are already incapable of interacting with a Windows PC.
* Mint's equivalent to the Start button. The button to its right displays the desktop.