Which Office Package?

Hi all, I need to by myself a nice shiny new Office Package - but I'm confused!

I currently have Office Professional (due to changes at work I'm no longer allowed to have this on my home PC) so want an equiv package without paying through the nose.

Looking on the both the MS and retailers websites has confused me - there seem to be limitless options!

But my real confusion is over the price differnces between Office Home/Student and Office Standard. Home/Student is c£99 whilst Standard is c£275. The only difference being a lack of Outlook on the Home/Student package. But Outlook 07 only costs about £70 ??

Why would I not buy Home/Student and Outlook rather than Standard? Are the versions of Word/Excel etc.. cut down?

Do you really need Microsoft Office? Have a look at Open Office. The price is attractive (£0) and it has most of the functionality of Office. Also, I believe, it can save in formats compatible with Office (and can open Office files).

It does look interesting and a possible alternative but, despite claims of being campat with MS products, I'm guessing I'll be forever sorting out little niggly things that crop up.

If you do find things niggly it will only be until you become comfortable with Open Office. Given that most users only use 20% of the functionality of their office products, mastering the equivalent parts of Open Office shouldn't be too difficult for a person of average intelligence.

The added advantage is that Open Office is free, and future upgrades are free, so you'll never have to pay any more money to anyone for your office product. If you go with Microsoft you'll pay whatever the going rate is for their product, presumably around £200, and its in Microsoft's interests to get more money out of you in future.

It always amazes me why people continue to pay for MS products when perfectly good free alternatives are available. Home users I can understand being bamboozled with Microsoft Marketing options, but when companies are failing and spending millions on MS products when stable mature free products are available... you have to wonder.

Costs nothing to try it. if it doesn't work out then fork up for the Microsoft product.

when companies are failing and spending millions on MS products when stable mature free products are available... you have to wonder

It's the corporate mindset that says "if something is free it can't be any good". Let's face it, the idea of services and products being free is anathma to most businesses. There's also the "we can get support from Microsoft" argument, ignoring the fact that they rarely need such support; anyway you can always pay some company for support with open-source products. The irony is that many of these companies are basing their business plans on web sites that probably run on Apache.

It surprises me more that private users, who have to pay out of their own pockets, aren't more receptive to open-source software. It's good and costs nothing to try it. If it doesn't work out you can always pay for a product, but it seems silly not to try the free product first.

The Home & Student version is also missing the Access database program, but for anybody who primarily wants Word 2007 it's an absolute bargain - I paid £58 delivered and I've seen it cheaper since. Yes, there's free open-source alternatives, there's also Wordpad included in Windows, but you can't beat the genuine article.

Word & Excel are the full-blown 2007 versions, as are Powerpoint and One-Note making up the package..

I'd agree with all comments - open source is fine as far as it goes. BUT: despite my work removing licences for home use I still need to run/design complex presentations and spreadsheets from home for use at work.

Besides which - so does my wife. She has Office provided for her on her laptop but inveriably uses my PC as she hates laptops.

If the MS products were no better than the open source products people would stop buying them using MD - wouldn't they? Hence - there must be some compat issues.

I'm going to download the Office Pro trial which will give me 60 days to think about this abit more.

If the MS products were no better than the open source products people would stop buying them using MD - wouldn't they?

You'd think so, wouldn't you. If you don't try Open Office you'll never know how good it is. Clearly how good Open Office is, or not, compared to Microsoft's offering is not what keeps you buying Microsoft, since not prepared to have a look and see how good it may be.

Go to www.software4students.co.uk and check out their prices for Office and Vista. As long as you qualify by having children at school or college or you attend a recognized college then you can purchase them.

Edited by deleted (Sat 21-Mar-09 16:33:09)