Microsoft Office Wanted

bazman

Would anyone be able to tell me where is the best place to buy Microsoft Office & what price should I expect to pay?

aidan_walsh

http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/office/howtobuy/pricing.asp

bazman

Cheers. Really didn't expect it to be that expensive!

I should have added it onto my recently purchased Dell - was less that 200 extra I think

Clanc

Does it have to be Office 2003? I have Office 2000 Pro and Office XP Pro that I need to find (recently moved house), and figure out how much I want for them.

pickarooney

Use OpenOffice? A bit crappy, but free.

galactus

Office is very pricey. Do you really need all the features it provides?

If you need to open documents that people send you there are free office viewers for Word, Powerpoint etc.

Star Office is a lot cheaper:
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/get/index.html

Skud

openoffice is free... go for it. Does all you need that office does, -€200

lomb

open office is very good. i used it the other day.it is incredibly like office and done in conjunction with sun microsystems.56million downloads cant b wrong. u can open and save in microsoft formats if u want.

astrofool

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Office_Applications_124.html office 2003 oem

lomb

microsoft office really is a waste of money considering u can get a better product for free.

Capt'n Midnight

bazman wrote:

Cheers. Really didn't expect it to be that expensive!

I should have added it onto my recently purchased Dell - was less that 200 extra I think

if you had done that then you would have got a non-transferrable OEM license which could not be moved to another machine even if you upgraded it to a later version of office.

you might be entitled to the acdemic version , radio adds said the whole family could use it for reports, but the site said non-commercial use only...

one of the big attractions of openoffice is that there are no gotcha's with the license.

galactus

I think it was Ian Paisley who said "Just say NO!"

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

pickarooney

Much as i dislike .doc/.rtf files, the standard responses on that page are so irritatingly prissy it would almost change my mind.

RicardoSmith

lomb wrote:

microsoft office really is a waste of money considering u can get a better product for free.

Other than cost. Better in what way?

lomb

well what do u want office to do?
better cause u can open and save the latest microsoft office files.

basicallly this is microsofts secret. if u have office 2000 on ur pc u cant open a file saved with office 2003's default. therefore this forces everyone to give them 300euro every 2 or 3 years.if one office machine gets say 2003 everyone of them needs it.
open office is a well trialled product (sun microsystems) it runs on unix, linux, windows, and will always open the latest files, looks modern and has a strong open source commitment.
it is better make no mistake.

pickarooney

lomb wrote:

looks modern

One of OpenOffice's major drawbacks is its fugly old-school interface. Have you found a reliable way of skinning it?
While OO might open doc files made with all versions of Word, they often look vastly different within OO, and vice-versa once you save them.
Also, I don't think it runs macros built into Word docs properly.

lomb

cant say ive needed to skin it, looks good to me.
documents i find look the same or near enough.
its true about the macros although they are working on it and wont affect most people.
it depends on how much money u have, weather u want 2 give it to MS and what u need it for and what os ur using it on.

RicardoSmith

lomb wrote:

...better cause u can open and save the latest microsoft office files....

How is that "better" if does the same thing as MS Office? In fact theres a lots of differences. Theres no equivalent of Outlook for example. Most people who use MS Office are business users. Thats also the people who use VBA (Macros) the most. Lots of companies have major systems built around VBA and Office.

OpenOffice and Star Office are great no doubt. But MS Office is a good package too. Overpriced maybe and MS still is a pain in the butt. But there has to be a good reason why its the no.1 application out there and its not because its rubbish.

Fibonacci

Buy the Academic version. Pretty much all the features fro ~€150.

pickarooney

RicardoSmith wrote:

How is that "better" if does the same thing as MS Office? In fact theres a lots of differences. Theres no equivalent of Outlook for example.

Slightly OT, but Ximian Evolution does a passable impression of Outlook. I'm not sure there's a free version for Windows now though, looking at that site.

joolsveer

I use Open Office (at home) and MS Office XP (in work) and I would honestly prefer OO because file sizes in its native format are much smaller than in MSO. The same document is 31K in OO and 189K in MSO. In addition I have found that sometimes OO will open .doc files which MSO says are corrupted.

lomb

MS office is bad as u may need to buy next years version next year rendering ur 300 euro investment pointless.

RicardoSmith

lomb wrote:

MS office is bad as u may need to buy next years version next year rendering ur 300 euro investment pointless.

Why? I know companies still using Word 6 and MS Office 97. You don't have to upgrade you know.

joolsveer wrote:

I use Open Office (at home) and MS Office XP (in work) and I would honestly prefer OO because file sizes in its native format are much smaller than in MSO. The same document is 31K in OO and 189K in MSO. In addition I have found that sometimes OO will open .doc files which MSO says are corrupted.

I know that Word docs can get bloated, but does OO support all of MS features? What different does 100k make? Do you get many corrupted docs?

Capt'n Midnight

RicardoSmith wrote:

Why? I know companies still using Word 6 and MS Office 97. You don't have to upgrade you know.

If they are OEM copies then they will be forced to upgrace when the change the PC as the license is non transferrable.

I know that Word docs can get bloated, but does OO support all of MS features? What different does 100k make? Do you get many corrupted docs?

It does not support passwords (due in next major release), to be fair M$ don't even support thier own features - it they did they you wouldn't get so many crashes / corrupt docs. eg: Always create a backup copy is a feature supported by OO for all docs, but office doesn't still support it for Excel. [RANT - HDD's are about 50c per GB, word/excel do crash and corrupt docs so not having this always create backup option on by default in all docs shows just how much M$ care about your data]

Fibonacci wrote:

Buy the Academic version. Pretty much all the features fro ~€150.

Only for full time student and the license states you can't use it for commercial usage or after you finish the course - the idea is that all your doc's should be in XP format or whatever so you have to buy the full retail version to access them then. - tip in Word make sure the option in save for "disable features not supported by word 97" is ticked - this helps avoid incompatibility problems within various versions of office, never mind third party products.

Also Turn OFF fast save in word as this sorta appends most recent typing at the end of the doc rather than saving it in order it appears on screen /printer - this makes recovery of corrupt docs possible and may reduce the size somewhat.

RicardoSmith

Some of the defaults are screwed for sure. Especially that auto save which causes a lot of problems.

I've worked with Word a lot, spent some time as a Word Developer in VBA and supported hundreds of users working on complex word documents, using complex macro and automation systems. My experience is that document corruption is very rare and is usually the result of bad practise by the user.

My favorite being a user (a content writer) who had the same word document open for about 6 weeks, wrote hundreds of words a day. Never saved it and then when his machine crashed because it had zero disk space left, not even one mb, he blamed word and the template for the crash and his loss of 6 weeks work. People not saving their docs for weeks was a common problem. At the end of the day they just walked away from their machine.

I'm not saying word is perfect. Its not, and it does cause problems. But its not as bad as most people make it out to be. A lot of the problems are due to lack of knowledge, training of users.

joolsveer

RicardoSmith said
I know that Word docs can get bloated, but does OO support all of MS features? What different does 100k make? Do you get many corrupted docs?

The size of the file can make a big difference when you are emailing them. I have supported many WP programs over almost 20 years and I have a preference for the lean look of OO which resembles the look of Word in the early days of windows. I've been using it for a couple of years now and I have never had a corrupt document - this is not my experience with MSO.

Hobbes

I use Open Office. Gives you the option to save as MS Word and also PDF format.

Has pretty much the same features as MS Word as well and its totally free.

RicardoSmith

If you like it then fair enough. Thats a good reason to switch. I'm not a believer in random corruption of software though. Theres always a specific reason for machines and software screwing up. If you look hard enough you will find it. When you zip docs they all come down to very little, unless they have large graphics embedded in them, or are indeed massive. Generally they compress very well.

But unless I needed something specific in MS Office I don't think I'd buy it myself. Thankfully I'm not developing in it full time any more. When I needed in the past I always had the client or company supply me with the version they were using, so I didn't need to buy it. Maybe thats an option here.

galactus

RicardoSmith wrote:

But there has to be a good reason why its the no.1 application out there and its not because its rubbish.

I'd imagine the MS Marketing department is fairly sizeable...

bazman

Cheers to everyone for the much appreaciated advice.

All I'm looking for is a Word Processing & Spreadsheet tool that is easily compatible with Microsoft Office. OpenOffice may fit the bill.

It's for a small office (3 people) so the Student&Teacher edition of Office is not an option.

I would consider buying Office for 200 or so per machine - it seems I can get the OEM version for around this price - what's the disadvantage of an OEM licence over a regular one?

Would consider a old edition of Office (e.g. 2000 or 2002) if I can get for cheaper.
Clanc - let me know if you find that CD, although I need 2 or 3 licences.

pickarooney

Today I had a ppt file saved in Powerpoint XP. When I opened it in Powerpoint 2000 some of the slides looked completely crap. In OpenOffice 1.1.4 it looked perfect. So I guess it cuts both ways.

po0k

OpenOffice++

Wonderful suite of tools.

RicardoSmith

pickarooney wrote:

Today I had a ppt file saved in Powerpoint XP. When I opened it in Powerpoint 2000 some of the slides looked completely crap. In OpenOffice 1.1.4 it looked perfect. So I guess it cuts both ways.

Yes Powerpoint 2000 should support a file type that didn't exist when it was released. :rolleyes:

OO 1.1.4 is FOUR years newer than Office 2000 :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

try microsoft office - if you don't like it, you can sell it, unless it's an OEM which is non-transferrable or if it's part of a volume license there are all sorts of conditions to re-sale. if you want to use an earlier version only some of the licenses have downgrade rights. If you want to move it to a different PC then you can't if it's OEM. some licenses allow you to install it on the laptop of the primary designated desktop user but only one can be used at a time (OEM doesn't allow this) you can upgrade it , but OEM is still locked to the original PC.
NB. License/upgrade rights change on a semi-regular basis so just because one supplier says you can avoid buying a full copy by doing XY and Z another might not at the same time or later. extra spell check languages cost extra, per pc

try openoffice - if you don't like it they will refund the purchase price , extra spell checker languages cost the same price. and if the business grows, you don't get a discount - all copies are at the same price. and it also reduces your risk as a director of getting a €127,000 fine !

PowerHouseDan

Have a copy of microsoft office xp pro oem with key

Capt'n Midnight

powerhousedan wrote:

Have a copy of microsoft office xp pro oem with key

Again I remind everyone that the OEM license does not allow you to transfer it to different HW to that it was supplied with.
If it came with a mouse or a printer cable instead of a full PC then it won't affect postage too much.

Microsoft brought in activation to prevent casual copying, but still use the OEM license to force people who already have a working copy of office to buy another one when they upgrade thier PC. - It's a marketing idea that has made criminals of a large proportion of thier customers.