Dh has a question about windows office when buying a new netbook

[nymphadora]

They come with windows 7 but then you have to buy a code for office.
Do you load office from a disc? Is it on the system ? or do you go online? or something else?

Thanks

I have it on my system but without the code docs opened with it are effectively 'read only'. I think this netbook came with a code for a 60 day trial but I forgot to activate it so it's probably expired [forgetful]

Consider carefully if you need Office, if you've got to pay for it then there are some pretty good alternatives out there such as Open Office which are free.

Hi, I had to buy Office 2010, 80 quid for three downloads, 60 quid for one download

you can't do it on a disc with the weeny ones, that is a netbook isn't it? you buy a disk and a code, and you have to use the code on a netbook but I'm using the disc on the pc

get them to tell you what to do because it's a nightmare negotiating the website ime though i am a dullard

I installed on my netbook straight from the net as I don't have a disk drive at all.

If you/your DH/or any friends work for a large corporate you may find that you can get the software activated for a much lower cost than the standard rate. I think I paid about £30 instead of £60. Worth checking out.

it is really so expensive, if there are alternatives I would go for it

I think if you only need one installation on a netbook then download but if you need multiple installations like updating your pc then you can buy the software that has both.

It's for word basically. He doesn't use anything else regularly & I have it all on mine anyway.

If you use a different word how does that work sending attachments?

Unless you do really weird things, Open Office will load and save documents in Word 97 (.doc) and Word 2007 (.docx) format perfectly happily. There are some edge cases where it may render slightly differently on the screen, and there are some even edgier cases where it doesn't work, but they're few and far between: the compatibility is pretty solid. That's less true for Powerpoint, where you can get some weird problems, and even less true for Excel, where I wouldn't trust it with my company accounts without checking it in detail, but if your main use is Word, OpenOffice is fine.

But the Home edition of Office is about £80 and the Student version is less than that, so you might want to just use the real thing.

Don't worry about "oh, there's no CD drive on a netbook". A USB CD drive is 30 quid, or you can use a full-size machine to copy the installation CD onto a memory stick.