Opening .pps and excel in win XP

Works can usually read older versions of some office documents - but never the latest version - can't have the punters not being forced to spend the full RRP for office can we ?

Options

Lowest common demoninator - Knudge
in Works - File / Open and make a note of what types of fies it can open - then check out office - File - Save and see if any of them match - try several types - some contain more formatting than others.

Read Only - can't save as
Download the Excel / Powerpoint viewers from the M$ site.
Office 2000 Viewers http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp
http://office.microsoft.com/Downloads/default.aspx

Or just get open office for FREE
100MB download or cover CD and no license. Because of copyright reasons some of the apps and menus have different names to M$ - but then again M$ change names from time to time too - in tools / option - make sure you save docs as Word 97 and Excel 97 or whichever Works format works above..
http://www.openoffice.org/
Does not contain an access compatible database - but then again not even microsoft make an dB that can read and save in other revisions of access....

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PS. I used to think "Microsoft Works" was in contravention of the Trading Standards act. But compared to the so called "integrated" M$ office suite it's not. Eg: Try moving cells between excel and word or look at access and VB incompatabilites between versions etc....
Rant over.