So as many of you know, r0o's old computer finally died of old age back in October. I have since gotten a new computer, but its so new and different! Not altogether in a bad way, but i'm getting used to it.

It took me about 2 weeks to realize that there's NO MS Office on this thing though. When i found out i was rather outraged. I understand wanting to make money but it made me want to search out other products to use simply b/c MS is being so greedy.

That being said, the only source close to office I've found is google mail, while a good site i don't want to upload every plunnie/fic i ever wrote just to be able to work on them, b/c there's a freaking LOT of them.

Now all of this in mind, from what i have seen MS OFFice can be bought for about $100 - $130, but it seems to be a subscription? is this correct? that I'd have to buy it every year just to use a product that used to be free on my old computer?

anyone please let me know. I'm working off a new HP that i'm happy with and working my way back to being a creative person again. it's been a 1 - 2 year battle with the arts in my mind/heart, but i want to get back to being creative again. And i feel like i need office to do that.

Are you talking about the Office365 Home Premium version? If so, I think the subscription part is for all of the extras, like the SkyDrive storage and such. Plus you have the rights to put it on more than one computer and on mobile devices. The other versions don't require any kind of auto-renewal. Once you pay that price, the program is yours, which is probably why they look like they are pricier up front.

Have you tried OpenOffice.org? It's free and compatible with MS Office. Ever since I discovered it, I haven't bothered with MS Office ever again.

Well there are quite a few freewares you can go for. OpenOffice is already mentioned, so I'll list few more for you to check out: AbiWord, KingSoft, SSuite, Softmaker, LibreOffice...

Oh, heck, I'll leave this link here (hope it's okay!). The said link followed techsupportalert, fyi.

www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-office-suite.htm

I tried them and most of them weren't for me, so play with them to see what you like the best.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: Most of them are actually office suites, so they do include things such as PowerPoint, Excel, etc, but they usually do have an option for you to choose which you want and don't want, from what I remembered.

I use LibreOffice now though I still have MS Office loaded. I'm telling you now, it leaves MS in the dust as to what it can do. I have two plugins for grammar that outstrip anything MS ever thought of doing with Office. Best of all? It's free as are the plugins.
www.libreoffice.org/

OpenOffice is actually dying, being replaced by LibreOffice. It works far better.

I can tell you, I've had MS Office since the time of Win 98 and LO outdoes it in anything it's ever tried and you don't have to pay a stupid fortune for it! If you get it and need help, let me know!

The two plugins for grammar are;
After the Deadline English Grammar Checker
Language Tool

Both outshine anything Office ever tried

I use open office, but I've heard the same thing about Libre and am thinking of switching. Can't see paying MS when I can get something that works as good for free. Just my thought.

You can buy Office 2013 as you regularly would, you just won't have a physical disc anymore (it seems). You can also only have it on one computer at a time and can only transfer it every 90 days. I suggest Office 2010 if you insist on having office, or try one of the free and low cost options already suggested.

I personally use SoftMaker.

Yups LibreOffice and OpenOffice are both good options, they are also complete Office suites with everything that MSOffice has, and are classified as opensource freeware, meaning that they are free to use and download, so essentially non-commercial.

I've used both but be aware that OpenOffice does not install 'clean' but will dump files onto your desktop after it installs, making it rather messy. Furthermore you may have to tinker with the suite, especially Writer, that being the word-processing program to get it to install the add-ons or plugins that Danyealle-sama was referring too.

Although the plugins are free many are also very old, going back four to five years, and were only current, especially the dictionary and thesauruses for various languages, for versions of OpenOffice under 3.5. These might also not be supported in later editions of OpenOffice like 4.01 the current one released, since they weren't developed for it, but earlier versions instead. You'll have to find them, download, and install to really test them yourself.

Also not all versions of OpenOffice work with all operating systems. If you have anything under Windows 7 you should be able to install most versions, but if you've got Windows 8 or anything after as your operating system on your new PC Roo, OpenOffice version 4.01, which is what I use currently, is the only version available compatible with Windows 8, but not later versions Windows 8.1 or Windows 8 RT.

OpenOffice will also install under 400 MBs or so as a full office suite on your PC, you could have trouble with the thesaurus being active in Writer too, so you'll need to configure with Extension Manager and the Writer 'Options' to get this one to activate. Surfing the OpenOffice forums for help on issues like this will yield few understandable results. I know. I tried it two weeks ago on installing the latest version of OpenOffice, after an hour of time wasted, I found an answer in the 20th page of the forum.

Pain in the keister.

Help for OpenOffice is all over the place. Just a word of warning.

LibreOffice is much cleaner to install, use, and some of the plugins used for OpenOffice are cross-compatible. It also functions in relatively the same manner. The Wordprocessing program is good though I found the thesaurus and spellcheck functions rather messy, but they get the job done. I used this for a while but was thrown for a loop when I saw after install that the software chewed up a whopping 1.5 GBs on install.

Ouch.

So I switched to OpenOffice instead. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Libre replaced OpenOffice in the near future. So I'll switch back. Additionally with Libre you can continue to save in .docx format if you've used Windows Office 2007 and onwards. You just need to tweak the saving of these files in the Options menu I think. I can't remember right now. Sorry. XD. You may not have too.

Either works well. I use OpenOffice out of familiarity mostly, even though I only really use it for the wordprocessor. Everything else is bells and whistles.

~ Pyre

I don't know if this helps but my old laptop (an HP) had to have the office software installed. My new laptop was bought at a Microsoft store and came with the newest version (I had to go online and enter a code). If you like the old version, DO NOT buy the new version as it takes a bit to learn and can be quite annoying. Are you sure you never got a code when you bought your laptop? Because I did and that's how I got my MS Office program.

Nice. Was probably a bundle package Kaoru, that likely came with the PC you bought. I've seen a few of these floating around the retail stores. Probably also depends on the version of the OS that's running on said PC. If it's a home edition of say Windows, you'll likely only get the basics, although Windows 7 home edition, came with Windows Starter, a stripped down version of Windows Office, Word, Excel, and Access. Doesn't come with Windows 8 sadly. XD. So I got stuck with OpenOffice and or LibreOffice.

~ Pyre

LibreOffice does install big, I give you that. However, much of what it does install, you don't need, like the mass of dictionaries from languages of all kinds. I don't need the full suite, just the writer and calc, i believe it is, so an easy way about that massive install is to do a custom install when you first do it. That way you pick and choose what you want and need. That includes parts of the program I'll never use and, frankly, don't even know what they are for, and the dictionaries for various languages. Those I'll never use. That cuts down the install size dramatically. There is no sense in cluttering up your computer with a bunch of junk you'll never use. That you can choose when you first install instead of the normal install and just uncheck what you don't want to go on.

If it's size you're worried about, you can get a portable version of LibreOffice here www.libreoffice.org/download/portable/ How good that is, I don't know as I've not played with it.

In all honesty, MS Office is a bloated piece of expensive software that is a nightmare. Ask anyone that runs websites like this what it does. It's horrible. It dumps all kinds of things into those documents you do not ever need and gives those that work for sites like this fits that causes snarling, or in the case of Miss K, swearing worse than normal, and that was a feat and a half. And every time they update it, it gets worse. I prefer the open sourced freewares because they just seem to work better without the nightmares that Office gave me. It's something I have to have for one very specific task that I can't get around any other way, but my ancient version ('03) works fine for that.

If it's size your worried about, you can use GoogleDocs. That's free as well. I've not worked with it so I don't know about functionality, but many are pleased with it.

you guys are awesome, yanno that, i really love y`all.

and actually it's a desk top. I know it's horribly old fashion to have a tower and all, but i really don't like laptops at all.

i get that they are far more convenient to use, as they can go anywhere, but i would be devastated if i lost my art/fiction/files b/c it got stolen or dropped. And for anything portable, well thats what my cell phone, and hopefully some time this year (tablet) will be for :33 as for dropping a desk top i'd have more issues going on if i were doing that, and well i have a mean-muggin-puppy-face to protect stuff...

as to answer you question, yes it's been bought in pieces. I have a HP pavilion 500-164 that came as keyboard, mouse and tower. BUT it's a $500 computer that i got for $350, not too shabby. Then during Xmas i got a new 1600x900 monitor that replaced my still working but out of date 1080x756? it was a 4:3 and now it's a 16:9. then got some $9.99 logitch speakers, which btw are as good as my old HP speakers from my last set (they are a monitor/speaker combo) so i had to buy new ones.

all of that, my new computer doesn't have office. Mostly i was just really comfortable working with it, the lay out and the feel. I'm not adverse to the newer versions, i have to use them at work so they don't bother me that much, but i do know they are annoying when you have to do something that was different on the older set, the new stuff seems so much more convenient, but its harder to work with if your used to the older versions.

I figure more then anything I'm a creature of habit, b/c of this i went looking for office first, but looking i didn't see that you could purchase out right. the way they set up the online store is supposed to be user friendly, but i felt like it was no help at all, and only seemed to present the subscription versions. and didnt offer anything else but more expensive versions, all at subscription rates.

which i guess is what shocked me. I;ll have to look into everything before i make up my mind but thank you all for the help! you've given me a lot to look at and think about !

You can still BUY Microsoft Office (costs a lot of money for a single license), or rent it for about $100 each year (Office365), OR - that would be my recommendation - get a good alternative office suite.

There are several on the market, some of them even free, but my personal experiences are that all of them but one have a bad compatibility with Microsoft Office, they all destroy formatting of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint formats (but these are still de facto standard worldwide).

Only one office suite, SOFTMAKER OFFICE from a German company, has such good filters that all of my doc(x), xls(x), or ppt(x) files look faithfully in both directions. That's a major merit of that office suite, but it has several more: it has a small file size, means low memory consumption and fast loading times, it is feature-packed and has almost every function of Microsoft Office (plus a few more, e.g. portable usage, it can be opened on any Windows PC from usb stick without installation), and you get free technical support. Interface looks familiar, like that of MS Office 2003 (menus, no ribbons) with several modern extensions such as tabs for multiple pages, navigation bar etc., so there's not too much of a learning curve.

It costs about $60 for three licenses, the Professional edition (including Outlook alternative eM Client 6 Professional)is available for $30 more. A free 30 day trial download is available. Have a look. And say goodbye to Microsoft Office.

With all of the freeware office programs you can do a 'custom' install. It's not recommended but it allows you to pick and choose what gets installed. This will limit the amount of drive space the program eats. I always use that when I install freeware because I don't need the three dozen languages that it wants to slap on my machine. I tend to take it down to basics on the programming.

As far as dictionary or thesaurus goes, I use dictionary.com, no www. on that. It offers both dictionary and thesaurus. The only real draw back to programs like OpenOffice is the spell check tends to have a lot of mistakes for whatever reason so I end up having to add most of the language to the dictionary myself. Dropping all of the dictionaries regardless of language is what I will do when I get a new laptop eventually as mine is 14 years old and still running XP LOL.

~Starfyre