Please help before this rapidly escalating domestic gets any worse! It’s new laptop time – Office applications, internet, scanning, photo/video manipulation although nothing too demanding. My missus swears blind her colleague got an Acer laptop with Office 2010 already installed for £250 and that “it’s fine”. I can’t see anything with the full product already installed at any price up to £500. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Apparently he bought it from buyer.com which a)gets terrible reviews and b) is American (so support issues?).

Ta
Keith

Its prob office 2010 starter which is a cut down and limited version

She swears blind it’s not! I think he’s either fibbing or he got the bargain of the century.

I’d be impressed if you could get a full version of office for that price including the laptop, my last laptop was more than that and it had to be activated at additional cost. Look on line at what a full version of office costs and show you Mrs and ask her how the laptop is less than that price!

I’ve bought a few new PCs for work and they all came with some kind of starter version of office, so did my new laptop. Took it off and installed open office.

A home and student version of Office would be cir a £80/£90 on its own, so I cant see how anyone could get it on a laptop pre installed for @250. Unless its running in trial mode and will conk out at the end of the trial period?

There’s a bastard version of Office Starter Edition kicking about at the moment called “ready to run” or something similar. Not had a lot of dealings with it but as far as I can tell, you get a Q:\ drive with Office preinstalled, so that if you decide to buy the whole thing it’s already got the source files to install from rather than having you download a gig of application data.

Click to run, that’s it.

Dunno much about it other than thinking it was a bloody ‘orrible way of bundling software. Could be a limited trial as WNB says, then maybe expire back to Starter Edition. Or it could just be SE even, that is “fine” for casual use.

As Cougar says, probably a 60 day time trial.

Thanks guys, she’s starting to believe me.

TS

Think its 30 use limited liscence

Do either of your employers operate a home use scheme? Some schemes allow you to buy a full copy of Office for the cost of the media. I bought Office 2007 pro for £10. Visio pro and Project were another £10 each. However, now if left their employ, I’ve had to uninstall them…. oooooookay 8)

This innit

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/products/office/pages/office_2010_starter.aspx

My father in law got all upset because one holiday planner spreadsheet he had come up with a non-problem warning every time it loaded. Other than that it seemed fine to me for the usual letter writing and personal accounting that Office usually endures.

However, now if left their employ, I’ve had to uninstall them…. oooooookay

Yeah – I had that problem too 😉

All my PCs have Openoffice on them, which is free, and seems exactly equivalent to Office for what most users use office for (ie, badly formatted letters and spreadsheets, and ropey powerpoint presentations with clipart in)

LibreOffice is the new OpenOffice. Long story; google it.

Do either of your employers operate a home use scheme?

This! My company does it as (though doesn’t really advertise it, I found it on the employee benefits). I bought Office 2010 Professional last month for approx £8.75, then opted to pay another £9 for a DVD backup in case I wanted to reinstall and they cancel the program in future.

Another option is the student version, this is how I got my mitts on Office 2003. Can’t remember how they check eligibility though.

then opted to pay another £9 for a DVD backup in case I wanted to reinstall and they cancel the program in future.

Though if they cancel the program I think you’re also supposed to uninstall 😉 and you just need to back up the download to have a way to re-install in future (of course you also have to delete that when you leave the company).

Another option is the student version, this is how I got my mitts on Office 2003. Can’t remember how they check eligibility though.

http://www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Office_2010-software.aspx

A .ac.uk email address sill suffice.

opted to pay another £9 for a DVD backup

Ouch.