Microsoft Office

I was out shopping for a Laptop earlier today and found that none of the offered laptops had Microsoft Office pre-installed The shop told me that I would have to purchase the software - MS Office Home & Student 2007 for Vista at £79.99.
The Office packages used to come pre-installed a few years ago

As I need to use Word and Excel every day, I need to get some kind of suitable software as well.

I see that you can download Open Office free. My question is what is the difference here and do you think that OO would suffice for a home user?
I don't really mind paying the £79 for MS Office, but if Open Office is very similar to use, it makes sense to get the latter one.

Any views on either would be appreciated

 

Sadly, this is the case now

I downloaded Open Office for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and TBH it's not actually that bad. It looks very similar to the Microsoft applications and functions in the same way. Best bet is to give it a download now and see if you like it or not.

 

Wow Thanks Steve and Macadam for the fast responses

 

Just keep in mind that Open Office is not yet able to open Office 2007 file formats.

IIRC, it is slated for next release though.

 

That was my next question Adryn! If I d/l Open Office and send documents to someone who has MS Office, will they be able to open my Open Office documents?

 

Thanks Steve for the info I will d/load OO and try it here on my desktop. I already have MS Office on this PC

 

Happened upon this thread while looking for a free substitute for Powerpoint, as I only have MS Works on my laptop.

I tried downloading Open Office from MG and got this error message after running the .exe. file:

"NSIS error

The installer you are trying to use in corrupt or incomplete. This could be because of a damaged disk, a failed download or a virus.

It may be possible to skip this step using the /NCRC command line switch (NOT RECOMMENDED)."

I don't know what NSIS and /NCRC are. All I really need is the Powerpoint-type software. Should I persist with Open Office or does anyone have other suggestions? Please advise --- thanks!

-alchemilla

 

Finally went out and bought MS Home & Student 2007 for RRP. Good thing is that after I activated it, I can use this same software on different systems another 2 times
Really needed to stick with Microsoft as I would be emailing manuscripts to publishers and if I had used OO, they may not have been able to open my documents.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts