Help!! Am in UAE and my new dell laptop is being a nightmare!

[Lavenderhoney]

Its driving me crazy. I bought it here, the language is all in American English, I went onto the online Microsoft site to purchase word, excel etc package and instantly when I click " buy" it goes into Arabic with no English button! Why?

Everything is fine until I click buy! If anyone can help I'll be really grateful.

Can you use Google translate to get the web site pages?

Alternatively, is there any way to visit a computer store and discuss your needs in English - thinking of long term support here, too - or is it impossible (I'm not familiar with UAE culture/ restrictions).

Also, do you REALLY need Microsoft - OpenOffice can provide you with pretty much all you need for WP and Spreadsheet, and is (generally) compatible with Excel, Word, and FREE.

OpenOffice was set up under Sun Microsystems. Sun was bought by Oracle and the developers (open source method) of Open Office were concerned that Oracle's corporate fist might squeeze how 'open' it would be in future, so set up Libre (='Free') Office so you can download free suites from either OpenOffice or LibreOffice (the former now under the Oracle Corp umbrella, the latter being an open source project).

The one thing you would need to get MS Office for would be MS Access, their database, but for most other things, I'd hesitate to pay Microsoft a penny when there are excellent alternatives.

Agree 100% with NetworkGuy, but if you're dead set on purchasing via the Microsoft Store (is this a Win 8 laptop?) then windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/use-windows-store-country-region-help Note the need for your payment method and region to match, though!

Hi there, thanks - I went onto the UK store and kept selecting UK, and finally downloaded it:)

Out of interest, what version/ applications did you purchase and how much did it cost (purely for 'keeping up to date' - I would recommend clients consider free options first, but understand sometimes one needs particular software even to put in a tender for a big project, so not an attack at you).

I just downloaded excel, word, pp which is all that's needed. It came as a package.