My wife and I just bought a new desktop as our dinosaur was on it’s last leg. We got the machine [Dell Inspiron] and there was no MS Office with it. We should have read the fine print.
Anyway, I use MS Word a lot, but never use excel or powerpoint. Do I need to go out and buy MS Office? I notice in the installed programs MS Works is already installed. It’s got works, spreadsheet, portfolio etc…etc…I can easily open my old MS Word Docs on it, and I can edit them and save them as word 03’ or 07’ if need be.
So should I even buy office?
Functionality. I see from doing a little googling that Works doesn’t have ALL the bells and whistles Office has, but then there is this other software called Open Office which purports to have the exact same capabilities as MS Office but it’s a free download. What’s up with that? Should I just install that?
If you’re a casual user, Open Office is more than adequate for you. It works well enough, can read and write MS Office files, and best of all, it’s free.
If you’re a more serious user, particular using the advanced features of Word or Excel*, you should perhaps take a look at MS Office Home & School version, which is a touch over $100.
Well, you mention that you don’t use Excel, but I’m speaking more generally.
What advanced features would I need? Just out of curiosity…I send mostly word files to people, and I get an occasional excel file. But open office allows me to read and write to both of those?
For design work I use InDesign so I don’t need photo editing software that comes with office.
I just don’t see why I should spend the hundred bucks if I don’t need to. I should mention this will be the very first time I haven’t had MS Office, and it feels kinda good. But I am a little fearful I will be missing something I might "need".
MS Works is a retarded little program invented by the humanitarians of Microsoft as a marketing tool. It gives you a barebones word processor, spreadsheet, and database capability that comes with your computer!. The only thing is, its products are absolutely incompatibhle with anything else on the planet, up to and including Tibetan prayer wheels, Cray-2 supercomputers, and the mind of Cthulhu. But if your only need for a spreadsheet is to balance the checkbook once a month and perhaps do your own taxes once a year, and to write a letter to Great Aunt Ida or the short personal essay that is supposed to accompany your job appliction, it’s cool.
MS Word has always been sold standalone as well as included as part of MS Office. However, they make more money selling you Office, so guess which gets pushed?
Useful and legal trick: take along your school-age child (nephew, grandchild, neighbor’s kid) with his school ID. There’s a cheap-o but mostly full-featured version of Office, without Access (the database application) available to students. And legally the only requirement is that it be (a) bought by a student, and (b) installed on only one computer, presumably but not explicitly the one used by that student.
Open Office? Being on dial-up (and with an ISP that keeps dropping my connection), I haven’t downloaded it. But I know professional writers and IT people who are recommending it highly – to the point one is ready to put it on CD for me, they approve of it so much. So: no personal experience, but a recommendation based on the opinion of people I respect and trust.
Not asked, but: Word Perfect? Used to be the word processor of choice. But MS Word pushed it out of the market by aggresive marketing and some bad choices by WP/Corel (can you say bloatware?) The user base is still substantial but shrinking yearly-- and deservedly so.
It sounds like you’re suggesting he get the Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition. It used to require that a member of the household be a student or teacher, but no longer. And the license allows you to install it on up to three computers. The only caveat is that it’s licensed for non-commercial, household use, so it’s no good for business-related stuff. It includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint (which seems kind of odd; what household needs to make PowerPoint presentations?).
My son made PowerPoint presentations in 6th grade for reports. Since the school started one laptop per student it seems like they are doing a lot more work like that.
I’ve had to do more than a few school presentations in Powerpoint. Mostly in college, but I expect as elementary and high schools get better equipment they’ll be seen there too. Plus it’s better than either Word or Excel for creative works like collages and such. Not a perfect creative tool, but Microsoft doesn’t care about perfect as long as it’s their product you use.
I tried and it already recognized it as being on another computer…I guess these new machines are intuitive or something. I really don’t know, but it said that I only had 30 days to use it. Or something like that. I have Office 03’ right here on my desk…Did I press something I shouldn’t have making it say I needed to register it? How could I not register it. I would be so much happier if I could just take this office o3’ CD and install it on my new machine…
Is there a way for me to deactivate it off my old machine and reactivate it on the newer one?
I think I will do this if I can’t just install the old cd on the new machine.
I’ve heard generally good reviews of OpenOffice software. (Haven’t tried it.) From what you’ve said, I think it’s safe for you to download and try it. If it doesn’t do the trick, you should probably go back to Word.
Is your copy of Office '03 a retail copy, or is it an OEM copy that came with a machine? Because i believe that can make a difference.
If it’s a retail copy, you should definitely be able to uninstall it from your old machine and put it on your new machine. But, as you’ve run into registration problems, you might need to call Microsoft and actually speak to a human being, explain your situation, and change the registration.
Not sure if you can do this for an OEM copy, but it might be worth a try.
I don’ t know why, maybe I’m old, but I find the idea of children making PowerPoint presentation for school disturbing somehow. Do they actually make bullet charts with annoying transitions and everything?
And as for this, OEM licenses are not transferable from one computer to another. Note that if you do want to purchase Microsoft Office, and the Home and Student Edition doesn’t meet your requirements, you might try buying the upgrade edition. (I worked for a small company once that was out of compliance on licensing for Microsoft Office. Since the full licenses were so expensive, I bought full-retail licenses for Microsoft Works and then licenses for the Microsoft Office Upgrade Edition, which was cheaper than buying the full licenses.)
You have a word processor on your computer. You’ve already paid for it, so use it. If, through the course of use, you discover you don’t like it, or it is missing some vital feature, then get something else. In that case, downloading OpenOffice is pretty much painless (assuming a decent internet connection). It costs nothing and you can always uninstall if you don’t like it. If you still don’t like it or find something lacking, then look into picking up MS Office. You don’t have to have MS Office just because it is so-and-so’s most favorite. Your software is just a tool - pick one that does the job for you and don’t sweat it. If it ever stops doing the job for you, move on to something else.
I tried OpenOffice about a year ago, and found that it was pretty seriously lacking in its ability to modify MS Office documents that other people put together. Since that’s pretty important to me, I had to go back to MS Office. For all I know it’s gotten better, but I can’t imagine that there’s been enough time for it to be full-featured. Still, it is free, so it can’t hurt you to check it out.
Meaning you couldn’t modify a word doc, or an excel doc? If I get a letter from a client in word, can I make comments on it and send it back with open office? That’s really the functionality I need it for. I’m going to download it and see what it looks like.
This new machine has an ungodly amount of ram in it, more than I’ve ever had, so I’ve got enough room for tons of fun!
I use OpenOffice at home and carry OpenOffice Portable on a jump drive. The price is right and there are some people out in the world that cannot afford Micro$oft products. I have found that it is useful in that it can open Borland Office and Lotus files and then turn around and save them as MS Office files. It can also export files to PDF format, if you find that useful also.
