Windows 7 pro

I'm an XP user looking at an offer of a 15.6" laptop with i5 processor, 4GB ram and Windows 7 professional for £400. Does Win 7 pro come with anything useful, like MS Word & Excel, Internet Explorer and a substitute for Outlook Express ? What's the advantage of the professional version of Win 7 OS ?

Jim Hawkins

Reply to
Jim Hawkins
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get the cheapest option and then install Linux which does come with all of the above.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Microsoft supply Windows Live - the replacement for Outlook Express and IE9 as a free download - there is none of that in W7 (any form). Word and Excel are in Office 10 - for lots of dosh. Morgan Computers have that kind of laptop for a lot less than that. The Pro version of W7 has better stuff for sharing but for most people Home is enough.

Reply to
Geoff Pearson

I'm an XP user looking at an offer of a 15.6" laptop with i5 processor, 4GB

I am getting to grips with Win 7 and its not too bad. The main annoyance is many options have been re-named for no apparent reason. You won't get word or Excel with it but "Open Office" does all the same stuff with similar commands and can be downloaded free of charge.

Mike

Reply to
Muddymike

Nope .. in fact even less than XP as they no longer include OE Express (aka Winmail)

I upgraded from Vista to W7 ... it is more stable ... but it does have quirks.

Reply to
Rick Hughes

Word and excel are part of MS Office (or sometimes available separately), but have never been part of any version of Windows.

IE8/9 is a free download from MS. Windows Live Mail is a kind of replacement from OE - it does mail just as badly, but the latest version has no usenet capability.

Most of the differences will only be of interest in the corporate environment - such as the ability to join a Domain rather than just a peer to peer workgroup style network.

The one worthwhile benefit from a home users perspective is that Pro includes a Win XP licence for use in a virtual environment. Hence you can download virtual PC from MS and get XP compatibility mode running without needing a viable license key for XP from other sources.

Reply to
John Rumm

It is worth doing your homework to determine if the i5 CPU version is a match for how you will use the laptop ie trading speed vs battery life. Not all i5s are created equal. Worth looking around carefully to get optimum value for money and match you usage profile.

FWIW Win 7 home premium 64 and a better CPU would be my suggestion.

The only other thing you can do is run XP programs under Win7 Pro with slightly less hassle. "Comparison" by MS is amusingly out of date:

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Reply to
Martin Brown

A student/home user Microsoft Office 2010 3 users licence cost about £80 from Amazon.

Reply to
Martin

Open Office is OK until you get files that have been made with real thing.

Reply to
Martin

Which version of Linux comes with MS Word & Excel?

Reply to
John Price

Many laptops come with 30/60/something days trial licences. You can then pay $manylots to turn that into a real office licence.

Or, if you are a teacher/student/something there are cheaper ways of buying it.

Use thunderbird or something for usenet - and then probably use it for email as well tbh. Some versions of Office will come with Outlook (confusingly nothing to do with the old "Outlook Express") which will do email but it's not great unless connected to an Exchange server (unlikely to be the case I'd imagine). I think all versions apart from the cheap home/student version do.

Software4students.co.uk do office 2010 pro plus (the full fat version) for 70 quidish. Probably the best option if you qualify. Also worth checking work - some places have various home use rights that you can buy into.

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

When you have shelled out an arm and a leg for M$ Office and then someone uses a later version you are well and truly stuffed until you hand over shedloads of money to Bill & Co.

The days of paying for this type of software are long gone. The days of being pissed about with 'activation' are on their last legs too.

Reply to
The Other Mike

LibreOffice (was OO) is possibly more modern and has more developers. OO has just got to v3.4 (from Apache) and LO is about v3.53 now, although OO might have overtaken LO - the version numbers might not be comparable.

Reply to
PeterC

Open office which is 'like MS Word & Excel', as the OP asked

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Indeed, so called "office ready" platforms...

Probably also worth mentioning there is a "free" ad supported version of office (well word and excel) called Office Starter edition. Dealers / manufacturers are allowed to preload it on new machines, but are not supposed to promote it anyway! (so quite how one tells the customer is that its there is open to question!):

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Reply to
John Rumm

or download the file format compatibility pack for older versions that allows you to read the new ones.

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The days of paying for this type of software are long gone.

Try telling that to businesses that have loads invested in bespoke apps that were written in VBA and sit on office, or commercial products that expect to communicate with Word as a print engine etc.

I wish...

Reply to
John Rumm

regards

Reply to
Tim Lamb

If you're still using Office '97, then you'd be better off installing either Open Office or Libre Office, both of which are reasonably compatible with most current MS Office formats. Libre Office will even open MS Works files. The only things you'll miss will be Access and Outlook.

IME, Office 97 won't install on anything later than XP, anyway.

Reply to
John Williamson

Or you could just download the free viewers and/or filters to use with the older versions.

Why is there no activation on windows 8?

Reply to
dennis

I have seen it installed on Vista although it didn't work very well. (hard to know which component to blame for that)

XL2007 never really worked properly on Vista either.

Office 2003 was a good vintage...

Reply to
Martin Brown

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