Should I buy Office 2003?

[Andvari]

Or Word 2003, if it comes in a single option, because Word is all I want.

Anyway, how often does a new Office come out? I haven't kept up with these things. Is 2004 coming out soon or anything? Immediate responses would be appreciated, because as soon as I get up from this computer I'm walking about 50 yards to the university bookstore to buy it (or not if you all suggest otherwise).

 

[The Green Bean]

www.openoffice.org

Word is not available standalone.

hatim

 

[Andvari]

Maybe I should give that a shot before I spend this kind of money (although I will be getting a student price). I definately want Photoshop Elements though, because I've tried the only free alternative that I'm aware of (GIMP) and disliked it.

 

[Malladine]

openoffice is good. Word 2003 is powerful, but it's microsoft and expensive. Your call

 

[Smilin]

I dig Office because of Outlook 2003 mostly. It rocks. For the features I use I only see in incremental difference between Word / Excel 97 and 2003. I do find that autocorrect is really starting to get good now. I ran open office for a while and I simply find I can type much much faster in word because I can just 'spew' text out and it autocorrects. When it first came out it was a bit akward and difficult to change if it made a correction you didn't want. Now it VERY rarely makes an unwanted change and puts a bubble next to it that makes it easy to undo.

For the Academic pricing and similar bargains Office 2003 is great. Full price is a bit painful for many average consumers.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: hatim

Word is not available standalone.

It is available as part of Microsoft Works http://www.microsoft.com/products/works/order.aspx

Interestingly, it's also available by itself for more than twice as much as Works. http://www.microsoft.com/produ...c1fbee00e&type=ovr

I'm not sure if there's any difference between the two versions, anyone know?

Either way, it's less expensive than Office.

Your best deal is if you're a student or teacher - you can get a non-upgradable version of Office that includes Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint for $150

 

[Andvari]

As a student, I can get Microsoft Office 2003 Professional for $79. I guess that's not upgradable, but $79 is a great price eh?

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Andvari
As a student, I can get Microsoft Office 2003 Professional for $79. I guess that's not upgradable, but $79 is a great price eh?

It may be upgradeable. You'll have to check the license agreement.

I would jump on that in a second. Outlook 2003 is worth $79 alone.

 

[Andvari]

I checked out Open Office (albeit for only about 20 minutes) and while it wasn't bad, I decided to "jump on" Office 2003 as MrChad suggested. Turns out it is upgradable as well.

And now that I have it, I was gonna do the Custom Install because I doubt I need all these things, and don't even know what most of it does.

Word
Excel - ?
Powerpoint
Outlook
Publisher - ?
Access - ?
InfoPath - ?

What do the ones do that I put question marks beside? And should I check the box that says "Choose advanced customization of applications."?

(And before you ask me what rock I've been living under, I've HEARD of all of them, I just don't know what they do. Yeah, even Excel... heh)

 

[Andvari]

Anybody?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Andvari
I checked out Open Office (albeit for only about 20 minutes) and while it wasn't bad, I decided to "jump on" Office 2003 as MrChad suggested. Turns out it is upgradable as well.

And now that I have it, I was gonna do the Custom Install because I doubt I need all these things, and don't even know what most of it does.

Word
Excel - ?
Powerpoint
Outlook
Publisher - ?
Access - ?
InfoPath - ?

What do the ones do that I put question marks beside? And should I check the box that says "Choose advanced customization of applications."?

(And before you ask me what rock I've been living under, I've HEARD of all of them, I just don't know what they do. Yeah, even Excel... heh)

Excel - Spreadsheet
Publisher - Page layout and design
Access - Database
Infopath - seems to have something to do with creating forms and managing information???

Unless you have an abysmally small hard drive, you do want to check the advanced options box and choose to run all of the applications you want from your hard drive. If you do not do this, some optional features will be installed the first time you try to use them. I've always found that really annoying.

 

[Andvari]

Two questions.

How do I get rid of this?

And how do I make my toolbars and stuff look like theirs?

 

[nageov3t]

you can drag and drop the toolbars onto lower levels.

 

[MrChad]

Right click your taskbar. Look for the toolbar listed under Toolbars and uncheck it (can't remember the name off the top of my head).

Not sure about the Word toolbar question.

 

[Andvari]

Well darn, I wanted my Word to look purdy.

Figured it out. Royale Windows Theme = no purdy Word. How ironic, seeing as how the purdy word matches Royale like perfectly. Oh well.