Please Help This Mom Out

K

kceetx

New Member
I am not a computer expert, but have enough hands-on to understand to get by. My daughter has just enrolled in a computer class at college. We got her
an HP Pavilion home PC May 05. It has Windows XP. I thought everything she needed for college work was on the thing. Today she said in order for her to complete her computer assignment, she had to have Microsoft Office,
Professional Edition 2003 which includes Access, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint,
etc. Please, someone help me out with my question. Am I going to have to
purchase this program which I saw is very expensive, or is this an upgrade
to her Microsoft Windows she has on the computer now?
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.
kc
 
Microsoft office is a completely different program then windows xp. XP is the operating system, pretty much what your computer runs on, while office is just a suite of various applications. Yes microsoft office is very expensive. What I would check first is see if your daughter can purchase it at a on campus computer store, like at my university they offer a education version, which is the regular version just cheaper, for $150. You can always purchase the applications seperately, for example if she just need publisher or somehting like that, but other than that purchasing it is the only option.
 
To also add up to the post, No you do not need to update the whole Windows on her computer right now. It is just an application provided by Microsoft, which may of gotten you confused about the whole updating thing.

There is also an alternative called OpenOffice that is completely free. You can ask her if her professor/she need those exact programs or just one that can do what MS Office does.
 
Yes open office is supposed to be a very good alternative, I need to try it sometime, just have her check, I am going to say that that most likely the professor will want the microsoft programs however, since they are the most commonly used.
 
I think you can use the same file extensions too, so the teachers could still read the files, i've used it before on Linux as wsell as windows.
 
Yes I will confirm the program are almost IDENTICAL. The look of Open Office is very similar to the Office 2003, and can run with all the extensions of MS office. You can download the FREE Full version here www.openoffice.org
 
You may be able to pushace a copy extreamly cheap though her college, or even apply for a free student version for microsoft.
 
OpenOffice is what I use, it's a great free program, but again it's no Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is better, you should just buy it, it's more useful than you would think.
-JTM
 
Thanks for your advice

Thank you for such quick replies and help. Speaking of the school store,
I did go by there today and I can buy the one the prof. wants for 200.00.
That really bites but is much cheaper than the stores. I am so glad I found
this site. I may be asking for more help down the road. Also, can I download
the free one on a 5 year old E. machine? It has windows 98 and is nothing
fancy-a hand me down. Take care.
kceetx
 
Yes you can. They have 3 different versions and they all should be able to run on Windows 98. Depending on your other specs like ram and such, you will have to look into the seperate requirements that will fit your E Machines.

If you have broadband, do it on there. If not, get it externally from another PC and copy it onto a CD or DVD and transfer it to your E Machines.
 
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