My son tells me he needs powerpoint etc for school work/projects “leave it with me son” so a quick search points me to microsoft office but how much ?? £80 ffs
can you recommend anything cheaper ? thanks

Try Software4students, always had good prices / quick service from them.

Still cost’s £80 for MS Office Pro 2010, but you will struggle to get a legal version for less.

Open Office – Does Everything he will Need
http://www.openoffice.org/
Will even save in Microsoft formats
Price FREE
Google Docs – Does Everything he will Need
Price FREE

£80 ffs

Sounds pretty reasonable for a highly complex and powerful suite of software.

If you don’t need that, or complete compatibility with anyone who uses it, then OpenOffice should suffice for free

The only problem with OpenOffice is that its not MS, therefore your son will be using/learning with a product that is not quite the same…

+1 Software for Students – got a good deal on Visio, well my son did 😉

Open office downloaded thanks

have a macbook pro – Mac OS X – and I haven’t bought “office” software.
I havent really needed to use office software since iI bought my mac, but I’m sure I will need to use it in the future.
So, I’ve looked in my school bookstore & we get a student discount.

why is software always seen as something that should be available for free just ‘cos someone has a bit of hardware available that uses it?

No one says – “I’ve just bought MS Office where can I get a free PC to run it on?” do they?

A student actually buying software? Doesn’t sound right to me…

Is it possible to buy older versions of MS Office from companies/ individuals that have upgraded to a more recent version?

£80 is cheap for the Office suite. It’s a very complex piece of software that has taken many years to develop.
Plus, it used to cost hundreds.

Does he need the software because he is being taught to use it? Or has he been told he will be doing presentations need presentation software?

If it’s like my lads IT classes they’re taught to use MS office.

Concepts are the same as the free ones, obviously but the mechanics are slightly different.

If he’s quick then it’s not a problem but the teacher may not be able to help if he gets stuck.

If he’s quick then it’s not a problem but the teacher may not be able to help if he gets stuck.

I’m sure he can google quicker than the teacher and learn more in the process.

The only problem with OpenOffice is that its not MS, therefore your son will be using/learning with a product that is not quite the same…

Again this is only a problem if you are leaning how to repeat steps. If you learn how to use it then you will be better equipped.

The difference between Office 2003 and 2007 is massive and more of a learning curve than Open Office or Google.

Plus for google is you will never not save it or loose it in a crash.

£80 is cheap for the Office suite. It’s a very complex piece of software that has taken many years to develop.
Plus, it used to cost hundreds.

Agreed. The alternatives are getting better, but ultimately don’t have the same features or level of polish. For the basics, that’s alright, but there will probably come a point where the free version doesn’t cut it any more. (Open Office pivot tables = a bit shonky)

(Open Office pivot tables = a bit shonky)

Thats a good thing, Pivot tables are spawn of the devil.
For 90% of the stuff Open Office works well. Most people use 20% of the functionality
Most people use word as a typewriter

£80 doesn’t seem like very much in the grand scheme of doing whatever you can to help with your sons education. Why give him another hurdle to get over with unfamiliar software?

Try googling ‘The Ultimate Steal’, very cheap Office for students.

I also recently got a ‘buy office for home’ offer from work, I think we could have three copies for £9 or something ridiculous. I would have thought you’d know someone who uses it at work and could get a similar offer?

£80?

Wait until he decides to go to Uni…. £80 will be one night during freshers week.

Oh, and since when were school pupils called students?

OpenOffice or LibreOffice (pretty much the same thing)

Unless your son is aiming to become a proper ninja-level power user, there is absolutely nothing that MS Office does that the free stuff can’t.

At A-Level college, we were called ‘students’, whilst my mates who stayed on at school were still ‘pupils’.

Ask the School. I thought most educational licences permitted additional copies of software to be loaded onto a home PC.

When I worked at a Uni I got Office for £25 and I think the students got it free.

Try LibreOffice/OpenOffice. There’s no way you’ll need any of the fancy features at school. The only thing to beware of is that sometimes the formatting gets messed up if you keep jumping between LibreOffice and MSOffice, especially presentations. If you save as a PDF they’ll be no problems.

why is software always seen as something that should be available for free just ‘cos someone has a bit of hardware available that uses it?

The OP was asking for something cheaper, not necessarily free. If you were talking about open-source, that’s another debate 🙂

mikewsmith
Thats a good thing, Pivot tables are spawn of the devil.

Haha, try telling that to an accountant!

The Barras. You could also get sports socks 5 for a £1.

Unless your son is aiming to become a proper ninja-level power user, there is absolutely nothing that MS Office does that the free stuff can’t.

I absolutely agree with you, but.

A few years ago I sat in on a work meeting where they’d pretty much decided to go OpenOffice throughout the business (savings on s/w in the £100k’s). And I asked the simple question of what saving we’d get through efficiencies?

None, was pretty much the answer.

So my next question was how much it would cost us in inefficiences (ie few people knew anything other than MS)… needless to say the proposal was kicked into the long grass.

I can get it for £8 through work but don’t need it, so I’ll sell you a unique license for £40 😉

Seriously though, we could maybe sort something out – and I’m not on the make.