i have been given this laptop for Xmas

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-pavilion-15-ab254sa-15-6-laptop-white-10137891-pdt.html

But it does not have MS office installed, i can return it and get Office 365 for £80 from PC world (no outlook)

Should i get the £80 Office package or should i get a free alternative ?
or return the laptop and get different deal ?

How much do you want MS Office. Plenty of cloud based office suites out there (MS / Google) or alternative downloadable options like Open Office.

I would sign up to a free gmail account and use Google apps online stuff. It is brilliant.

£80 is high for 365 – thats a multiuser license!
I only paid £65’ish for a 5 user on Amazon.
Single IIRC is around £30 plus it should have Outlook as part of 365

https://www.libreoffice.org

Cheers I’ll take a look at those suggestions

Hammy is your licence just an annual one ? I’m after a lifetime licence, cheapest I can find a full licence with outlook is £115

Through Amazon – annual but worked out cheap when taking into account online, anywhere access, 1TB storage, always updated, etc.
5 licenses in that too – just send an email to whoever you want to give one too.

Do you use it at work? See if your workplace subscribes to the Home User Programme (HUP) – it’ll cost you a tenner if they do.

Failing that, LibreOffice.

My brother and Dad are in a similar dilemma.

My brother has a Mac. He is applying for jobs and has to fill in Word forms. The formatting goes awry when opened in OpenOffice and you can’t save back in .docx

My Dad has a PC but only Office 97. He can’t open .docx word files sent to him and so uses a combination of OpenOffice and Word ’97.

Would buying this mean they can both download a version of of office that would work for them ie. one on a mac and one on a PC?

My Dad has a PC but only Office 97. He can’t open .docx word files sent to him and so uses a combination of OpenOffice and Word ’97.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=3

Ah thanks. I had always thought that MS didn’t supply a fix to let Office 97 open those files but will give that a go.

Keppoch – if you/they buy the home and family version – theres FIVE licenses you can share.
Gives you Office 365 on your device (Mac/PC/iPad/iPhone) and 1TB of online storage each.
Also allows you to log in to your account anywhere online and edit/send files.

I use Kingsoft Office (now WPS Office) which has a free version and a low cost pro version. I found this was a lot better than Open Office, etc at handling MS Office documents correctly, and the interface was similar to MS.

f you/they buy the home and family version – theres FIVE licenses you can share.

Is that the same as the version in the link above?