-
Posts
-
I’ve been looking at buying Microsoft Office 2007, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts about it…….pro’s and con’s?
There were 2 packages that I thought might be useful to my 11 year old son:
Professional Plus
EnterpriseI’d appeciate any feed back on this.
Thanks
Phil
@phil17349 wrote:
I’ve been looking at buying Microsoft Office 2007, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts about it…….pro’s and con’s?
There were 2 packages that I thought might be useful to my 11 year old son:
Professional Plus
EnterpriseI’d appeciate any feed back on this.
Thanks
Phil
Hi Phil, I use MS Office 2007 (previously Office 2003 Pro) and i must say I love it. It does take a bit of getting used to as the toolbar navigation is completely different – but once you have got the idea of where things are, it is remarkably intuitive.
The only downside is that it is a real memory hog and you need loads of RAM to run it properly (any version). I had 1.5GB of RAM and I upgraded my PC to 4.0GB of RAM and it runs just fine. Less than around 2GB and it will get sticky – less that say 1.5GB and it will hang all the time.
If you want any advice on installing or upgrading to Office 2007, let me know.
Hope that this helps – let us know how you get on with it.
Pro’s – you will have the latest edition that you can brag to your mates about.
Cons – not only is the software going to cost you a pretty penny to buy, but as mentioned you really need a decent amount of memory for it to work as desired and may cost you a extra hit in the pocket for a memory upgrade. Having used the enterprise and professional editions and office 2000, XP, and 2003, I would say don’t waste your money on the new one and get a older version as it’s unlikely you will really notice any difference. So is there a reason you need the new version rather than a older version?
I’m using Office 2000 on my lap top, but I can’t load it onto my son’s desk top pc because I’ve lost the booklet with the access code. (If I could find a way to get that access code, I’d load Office 2000 on my son’s pc.) I can get Office 2007 for around £50 to £60, but can’t find Office 2003 for less than £100, so it appears to be a logical solution to get the latest version as I should be able to run it on both pc’s. However, memory may be a problem (I’ve got Vista with 17GB spare hard disk space, my son’s got XP on a very basic computer with lots of games loaded although they could be deleted to free up disk space). I’m also worried about how the latest version will affect the Excel and Word docs that I’ve got filed on my lap top.
Phil
OK in spite of ‘justhere’s’ comments – with which I agree BTW – you will get Office 2007. HOWEVER on a basic PC it probably won’t run – not because of the limited disc space (although that will cause isses all by itself) but because of the probably underspec processor and low RAM.
That said and to deal with your specific point. All Office version prior to 2007 use formats like .doc for Word and .xls for Excel; .ppt for Powerpoint and so on – just as you are used to right now.
Office 2007 uses a new file system which is differentiated by adding the letter “x” to the end of a file suffix. So Word 2007 documents are now .docx; Excel are .xlsx etc etc.
However, Office 2007 IS backwards comapable and will run in what they call “comatability mode” which means they will run any Microsoft file from an earlier version without any noticeable problems at all. The only difference is that if you are working in compatability mode you cannot use ALL of the new features on 2007 – only some of them
In practice this makes no difference at all. If you want to use the new features, you simply “Save As” into the new file format and off you go.
Phil, I’m sure if you search google, you could “borrow” a serial number and save yourself a pile of cash all round.
Also, “Office 14” is coming.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/231960/office-14-to-appear-next-week.htmlNaughty naughty . [-X [-X [-X …. “borrowing” a serial number COULD land you in deep wotsit with Microsoft. They usually require new installations of Office 2007 to be “activated” as well as Registered and if they spotted that the serial number already exists on another PC …….. Hmmmmm.
You should (all) be aware that Microsoft is getting more and more ‘muscular’ when it comes to piracy of its products and is beginning to treat it as theft.
I had the free trial on my new lappy, but Ive deleted it and got a free alternative instead.
the free trial took sooooo long to download even on a new laptop, so I gave up and got rid.
Talking of copying serial numbers etc, you really need to be sure you get a proper number that will work, when I tried it with windows xp, it told me my windows had been activated, yet it ran out after 30 days, so I had to get a legit copy (although it was from a friend) and re-load windows. I dont know if office will be the same, but Id bet it is.
there are hundreds of sites/forums/free downloads promising legit numbers and downloads and secret methods to over-ride this, and I tried pretty much all of them, but unsuccessfully.
Just to add one more thing about Microsoft Office 2007 (any version).
You must be aware that it will NOT co-exist with any previous version of Microsoft Office. This means that IF you have a previous version of Office (2003, 2000 etc etc) installed on a computer on which you intend to install Office 2007 you have to select the “upgrade” option when you start the install. It will then remove the existing installation as it installs the new one.
Your data will be perfectly safe. Indeed even if you are currently running Outlook 2003 (for example) it will import ALL your mails, contacts, even all your settings into the new version of Outlook 2007. You then manually uninstall Outlook 2003 afterwards (once you have checked that the data import has worked properly). Word; Excel; Powerpoint; Access; and so on, data files will remain totally unaffected by this.
@sharongooner wrote:
……………….there are hundreds of sites/forums/free downloads promising legit numbers and downloads and secret methods to over-ride this, and I tried pretty much all of them, but unsuccessfully.
Yes Microsoft have really wised up to this scam and as fast as somebody posts a so-called sure fire way to activate a pirated copy of Windows or Office etc, they move to block the ‘number’.
This means that you don’t get any support or updates and in fact they can remove all functionality from some of the programmes, if they are pirated copies.
Personally I think this is only fair. In many ways it’s like paying for the Road Tax on your car. If I pay for mine then I feel that others should pay for theirs and not, in essence, steal it. Software piracy is, at the end of the day, common theft.
Get involved in this discussion! Log in or register now to have your say!