Is the student version of Office 2003 worth the $130 over Office 1997?

[Chaotic42]

I have Office 97, and I've been thinking about getting Office 2003. Is it worth the $130 for the upgrade? Any new, fancy features that I'm missing out on?

 

[blurredvision]

How often do you use it? May be worth just having a new version period. I'd hate to be using something relatively often that came out not too long after Windows95.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
How often do you use it? May be worth just having a new version period. I'd hate to be using something relatively often that came out not too long after Windows95.

Fairly often. I've got one more humanities class left and that's next semester. I'll probably be writing every night.

 

[bersl2]

Really, do you plan on using any of the "advanced" features? I'm guessing probably not.

So what's the point? Just because it's "newer"? That's a pretty poor reason to spend $130. In fact, if you didn't already have a version, I'd tell you to go O.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Honestly no, it's probably not worth $130...Office 97 should still work fine.

I just happened to upgrade since I got it for $15 through my university.

 

[ryanv12]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Honestly no, it's probably not worth $130...Office 97 should still work fine.

I just happened to upgrade since I got it for $15 through my university.

Oh nice! I thought my university price of $30 was good....

I also got Windows XP Pro for $60

 

[CycloWizard]

If you're just word processing, don't bother.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: bersl2
Really, do you plan on using any of the "advanced" features? I'm guessing probably not.

So what's the point? Just because it's "newer"? That's a pretty poor reason to spend $130. In fact, if you didn't already have a version, I'd tell you to go O.

I don't know how/if it's better, so I don't know if I would use any of the additional features since I don't know what they are.

 

[episodic]

If you are just writing mostly, then don't worry about the whole suite. Upgrade to Word 2002 XP for a song here:
http://www.softwareoutlet.com/Merchant2...Category_Code=BUS-007&Product_Count=47

 

[NeoV]

I would have to agree, the upgrades to Word haven't been very impressive, off the top of my head I can tell you that seeing your revisions is about the only notable upgrade.

If you were a heavy Outlook user it might be a different story

 

[imported_obsidian]

Unless you need MS Office for work, I have found that OpenOffice to be just as good for my word and spreadsheet needs. Hell, I get Office 2003 from work and I don't even have it installed.

 

[Teclis2323]

Hey Chaotic42,

Try checking with your school's IT Department. Sometimes they have licensing agreements with Microsoft, and you can buy Office Pro for great prices. My school charges $10 for WinXP Pro and $15 for OfficeXP pro!

Good luck man!

Jacob

 

[Fenixgoon]

open office!

 

[duragezic]

Can't stand Office 2003 here on the lab machines, or maybe the lab systems are just way too slow. I've been using Office 2k at home for years which works perfectly for everything I do. It's very small and compact installing just Word, Excel and Powerpoint minimally.

 

[minofifa]

open office excel program is junk for scientific needs (graphing/tend lines ect) but i guess that does not apply to you.

The biggest thing i miss in open office's word program is how MS office underlines misspelled words immediately.

 

[bob4432]

just out of curiosity, does the splash screen say "studen/teacher version" when you start it up?

i need to upgrade and am a student....

 

[skace]

Office 97 had some annoying qwerks, such as Excel corrupting xls files or freezing or Word having problems with autonumbering / manual numbering being inter-mixed. I'd upgrade just to stay away from these bugs...

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: duragezic
Can't stand Office 2003 here on the lab machines, or maybe the lab systems are just way too slow. I've been using Office 2k at home for years which works perfectly for everything I do. It's very small and compact installing just Word, Excel and Powerpoint minimally.

Yup. At work, we had been hanging on to Office 97 until earlier this year. We upgraded only because it finally made sense to go off NT for the servers and workstations and we got Office 2003 with the new Dell machines.

For useability and looks, I find 97 totally pwns 2003. It's really just the higher end more abstract functions you'd never think about where 2003 excels. Things like mail merges out of Access and whatnot....useless outside of a work environment.

 

[nweaver]

Excel is the best thing to ever come out of Redmond.....I love excel

I don't think I would plunk down 130 for it. I'm still on office XP though. If you can get a cheap version from school, then I probably would.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: bob4432
just out of curiosity, does the splash screen say "studen/teacher version" when you start it up?

i need to upgrade and am a student....

anybody?