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)

I agree and what is more your child doesn't have to be able to use Office, so long as they are at school is good enough!

Strictly speaking Office Home and Student edition is priced as it is as the licence specifically prohibits commercial use so if you're doing stuff for work using it you're breaching the EULA. Other than the licence restrictions the software is exactly the same. But as others have said if breaching the EULA doesn't bother you and you have kids then software4students.co.uk is the best place to get your MS software.

Regards,
Steve

After years of using all versions of Word for Windows (since version 1)/Office 95 - When I got a trial version of Office 2007 I decided to try Open Office before spending the money - I don't have any office installs on PC and yet to find any grief using Open Office

What did you do with the money you saved?

tbh the money wasn't the issue (there would just be a little less in savings account) - the new office GUI was

Flipping 'eck! (referring to software4students)

Considering I have two kids and my wife is a literacy consultant and doing a masters I think I'd qualify for this!

Thanks for the info. This is a real find.

In reply to a post by Discord:

I currently have Office Professional (due to changes at work I'm no longer allowed to have this on my home PC)

I am just curious as to how work can dictate what you may and may not run on your own PC at home?

In reply to a post by gomezz:

In reply to a post by Discord:

I currently have Office Professional (due to changes at work I'm no longer allowed to have this on my home PC)

I am just curious as to how work can dictate what you may and may not run on your own PC at home?

If work was providing the licence - IIRC there are some software licences which allowed you to use on two machines PC & Laptop or PC & Home if you are the only user of PC.

Office 2007 is superior to Open Office, MS offer three types of license:

Home and student: 3 user license, "for non commercial use" in the window frame.

Academic: Exactly as per the full versions though licensed for academic use.

Full: Licensed for full commercial use.

2007 Professional on an Academic license is great value.

Edited by 50pence (Sun 22-Mar-09 09:35:18)

In reply to a post by 50pence:

Office 2007 is superior to Open Office, MS offer three types of license:

So you are saying MS Office 2007 is superior because it offers three license types?

That does sound like the sort of marketing you would get from Microsoft!

To say Office 2007 is superior to Open Office is bonkers!

last time I tried it open office was pants

But were they attractive pants?

I have never found the need to use any Office software (Windows or Sun) at home.

Office 2007 Standard is available from Ebuyer for £95. Just got it myself.

Word, Excel, Outlook & Powerpoint.

Open Office?

Been using it for months on my lappy. It is not the same. things I didn't find easily/don't know how the hell you do it:

Publishing spreadsheets to web.
The syntax of formulae is different (semi-colons instead of commas ). That's just silly.
Every time I try to save a document which is from Excel, and it has macros/formulae it tells me I'll lose functionality.

I'm sure the stuff is do-able or learnable, but after 14 years of MS Office, Paying the guts of £25 per year and never having hassle is worth it.

Now moving back to Office. At last!

In reply to a post by camieabz:

The syntax of formulae is different (semi-colons instead of commas ). That's just silly.

Not when you try working with international versions and where you have to deal with countries that use commas for the decimal separator

The point I make is that regardless of which country uses what, there should be a universal standard on Office-type syntax formulae.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

The point I make is that regardless of which country uses what, there should be a universal standard on Office-type syntax formulae.

I suspect it will happen - when we have a universal standard for writing numbers - Link

Simple things like the PDF convertor, it works perfectly in Office 2007 where as in Open Office the formatting always needed fiddling with.

Office 2007 truned off a lot of people who were used to the Office 2000/2002/2003 GUI, including me for about 30 mins, though once used to it is is great.

The only issue is that the Publisher GUI does not match the other apps though Publisher 2007 is actually a very powerful tool knocking on Adobe's door in some respects.

Possibly confusing at first, but the Office 2007 GUI is brilliant now that I have been using it for a year. I got the Office 2007 Ultimate Edition (the top one, whatever it is called - I think it is 'Ultimate') for £39 as part of a student deal from Microsoft-run site 'The Ultimate Steal'. Requires UK Student ID, though.

matt