Microsoft word....

[Petekilla]

Just noticed after having my T60p that not even microsoft word is installed....does this seem accurate? I ordered a packaged T60p with no Microsoft word? I thought that was at least the standard on alll microsoft platforms, no matter what. which would not require an upgraded software package.....

comments?

[BudC]

Just noticed after having my T60p that not even microsoft word is installed....does this seem accurate? I ordered a packaged T60p with no Microsoft word? I thought that was at least the standard on alll microsoft platforms, no matter what. which would not require an upgraded software package.....

comments?

The only time I ever got MS Word was when I got MS Works on a Dell. At other times Dell offered Word Perfect Office.

Why not download Open Office. It's free and does about what MS Office does w/o Outlook.

You get nothing with a Thinkpad but then you get nothing with an Apple MacBook Pro either.

I did get Lotus Smart Suite after I called and asked for it. I don't know if Lenovo still offer it since it's an IBM product.

[KawaiDon]

MS office is an extra cost option, with a couple of versions availlable.

This is clearly marked on the on-line order form, and the salespeople usually ask about this when ordering on line in my experience.

[440roadrunner]

"word" does not come with windows. You sure you're not thinking of "Wordpad?"

[Kyocera]

Microsoft gives nothing away free, about the cheapest word processing software you'll get from MS is Works, which isn't to bad, the last time I bought a Works suite it was around $30 US.

[BigWarpGuy]

Have you thought of using OpenOffice? http://www.openoffice.org

[dsigma6]

i have yet to find a reason to a)use word and b)pay for word. bigwarpguy points to a good replacement, however slow it is to load the first time.

[jdhurst]

People can, of course, do and should do whatever they wish. But I have Open Office running in a virtual machine, and it is so slow that I am more than happy to open my wallet for the Complete Office 2003 Professional kit. It is much faster and inherently completely compatible with what the majority of people use. ... JD Hurst

[Dead1nside]

People can, of course, do and should do whatever they wish. But I have Open Office running in a virtual machine, and it is so slow that I am more than happy to open my wallet for the Complete Office 2003 Professional kit. It is much faster and inherently completely compatible with what the majority of people use. ... JD Hurst

Unfortunately true, in my experience also. When OpenOffice.Org can compete properly, on all fronts to Office then I will glady use it. (Drop the Java).

[Petekilla]

Yes i have gotten a copy of OpenOffice...however even though marked for automatic open with office it still goes to wordPad which i will search for a solution there.

Also i doubt they would ever drop the java aspect as it is in fact developed by Sun Microsystems...correct?


I was just unaware of the fact that the laptop would not have word...as i have never had this issue b4. I ordered over the telephone actually and the sales rep did not make this evident to me, but i should have looked into it. Open office will have to work, or i have a small buisness Microsoft package at home with everything included.

[GomJabbar]

I bought a year-old version of Microsoft Works from Amazon.com a couple of years ago for ~$35.00. It included Microsoft Word. You might do some searches for Microsoft Works.

[Dead1nside]

You're right about the Java, look elsewhere for my rant on OO.Org's use of Java.

I'm quite glad that Microsoft's academic versions of Office are remarkably cheaper. I find my 2000 copy is handy enough for everything, it's just sans the glitz.

[DIGITALgimpus]

If I were you, I'd just use OpenOffice, at least for the moment. When Office 2007 ships in a few months, people will start using the new formats supported, so if you buy office today, you spend a lot of money, and will likely want to upgrade in a year. For most people, the new packaging options (such as "Home & Student") will also result in large price savings:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview ... uites.mspx

I personally would recommend avoiding the beta of 2007 for any serious work, I had it for about a week, and gave up thanks to many various glitches (including my first bluescreen in about a year). Beta software isn't for production use. Even MS explicity warns that.

[Clockface]

I still use Microsoft Word 97, as it does everything that I want it to, and has a much smaller install size than later versions. And even then, I never use 95% of it's functions. Later versions just seem to add more functions that I'll never use, whereas all I need is a text editor, a spell checker, a thesaurus, a search/replace function, a print preview, and a few other things.

If all you want is a word processor, then you can probably buy Word 97 (or any relatively old version of MS Word or MS Office) from ebay, as many people rush out to buy the latest versions of whatever software they use, whenever it's released (and then have to put up with the increased use of resources, the trouble of having to learn their way around the new menus and icons, the new bugs introduced into old features, and the new security leaks - and all so that the users can gain the new features that most of them will never need anyway).

Or there are probably a great many freeware and shareware word processors or text editors available, that only contains the functions that you'll need, for a fraction of the cost of the Microsoft products.

[Dead1nside]

OpenOffice.Org 2.0 still needs a little work, my academic copy of Microsoft Office 2000 seems to suffice for everything.

[jdhurst]

On one hand, basic documents produced by (say) Office 2003 are still compatible with Office 97, so if ones needs are basic, the suggestion to use Office 97 is a decent one.

I think I read that Office 2007 will have a different file format and will no longer be compatible with Office 97. I use Office 2003 currently (and no, I do not use all the functions), and I am in no rush to upgrade currently. ... JD Hurst

[Dead1nside]

Microsoft Office 2007 uses a new file format, it can still read the old ones but it will convert them into it's new format. It's apparently meant to save a lot of space for big companies.

[jdhurst]

Microsoft Office 2007 uses a new file format, it can still read the old ones but it will convert them into it's new format. It's apparently meant to save a lot of space for big companies.

Bah, humbug. Since I use Office 2003, and since I deal with people who use everything from Office 97 forward, I can confidently create reasonably plain documents and send them out with the assurance that all recipients can read the files.

If I were to adopt Office 2007 when I move to Vista in 2007 (all maybe at this point), I will have to see how to save documents in prior formats. At this point I just save, send and it all works.
... JD Hurst

[Dead1nside]

The retooling and retraining needed to use the new ribbon system will probably cause a lot of hassle for everybody. It might just be easier to head for OpenOffice etc. the same goes with Windows Vista, why not upgrade to Linux instead?

[davidspalding]

Microsoft Office 2007 uses a new file format, it can still read the old ones but it will convert them into it's new format. It's apparently meant to save a lot of space for big companies.

Woody's Office Watch made an interesting recommendation recently ... Office 2007/Vista will not have Outlook bundled, so buying upgrding to Office 2003 now (while it's on store shelves) allows slow upgraders (like me) to have the latest version, and not pay extra for Outlook.

Better still, buying the Office 2003 Student/Teacher edition (street price from $100 to $130), provides the basics, including Outlook 2003. I'm not fan of MS (usually getting my OS' and Office's as review copies or on TechNet), but in this case, the $100 price was reasonable to me. I've been grumbling about Outlook 2000's shortfalls (while stubbornly avoiding Thunderbird).

[mattbiernat]

The retooling and retraining needed to use the new ribbon system will probably cause a lot of hassle for everybody. It might just be easier to head for OpenOffice etc. the same goes with Windows Vista, why not upgrade to Linux instead?

i would guess that it depends on a person. if you find linux easier to work with go for it. personally i tried ubuntu and suse and i found them okay but somehow not appealing to me. i also tried mac OSX with the same results. eventually i admited my own mistake and came back to windows. but it really depends on your personal taste and how you use your computer.
for word documents i tried both microsoft word 97 for windows, ms word 2003 for mac and open office. they all work fine for my purposes which is just writing general research papers and essays. but for some reason i found word 97 to be the fastest while open office slow but cheapest. i currently use open office - it works good enough for me. they all seem to be getting their basic job done.

[jdhurst]

<snip>
Woody's Office Watch made an interesting recommendation recently ... Office 2007/Vista will not have Outlook bundled, so buying upgrding to Office 2003 now (while it's on store shelves) allows slow upgraders (like me) to have the latest version, and not pay extra for Outlook.<snip>

I generally see Office as improving. It takes ever more disk space (900Mb for Office 2003 up from about 300Mb for Office 97), but hard disks are bigger than they were in 1997, too.

But from another perspective, things go downhill. I have to install the Office Shortcut Bar from an Office XP disk because Office 2003 no longer offers that function. If Outlook goes as well, I shall have quite a mismash of Office installs to get me to where I was in Office XP.

... JD Hurst

[Dead1nside]

Blame OpenOffice.Org being written in Java... on a reasonably powerful machine it's not too sluggish.

[mattbiernat]

Blame OpenOffice.Org being written in Java... on a reasonably powerful machine it's not too sluggish.

well eventually then more people are going to use it. me - i have 2.0 ghz p4 and it took forever to open it. but on the new t60 things worked fine. i think OO is a great alternative for students who want to save money wherever they can.

[davidspalding]

... But from another perspective, things go downhill. I have to install the Office Shortcut Bar from an Office XP disk because Office 2003 no longer offers that function. If Outlook goes as well, I shall have quite a mismash of Office installs to get me to where I was in Office XP.

Oh, there's a way (or two) to get the equivalent of the Office Shortcut without installing some of Office XP. Here's a couple pics, we can talk about how-to if you're interested.

www.chromejob.com/shortcutbar

[jdhurst]

There are ways (as you showed) to get the shortcuts into the tasbar and other places, but I like the real, live Office shortcut bar. I'll see what happens when Office 2007 comes along.
Thank you, ... JD Hurst

[asiafish]

OpenOffice is not acceptable to me, mainly because file format translation is an absolute deal-killer.

[davidspalding]

Just as an alternative, Softmaker (www.softmaker.de) makes a Word/Office replacement which is very full-featured. They have versions for Pocket PCs (Windows Mobile), and ... well, back when I bought the PocketPC version ... the Windows version comes bundles. YMMV.

Once a year (can't remember the month, but the date is the 11th), on the occasion of a German carnival, they hold a sale for 11 hours, where many of their applications sell for US$11. Subscribing to their newletter will yield the advance notice.

[Dead1nside]

(while stubbornly avoiding Thunderbird).

Why have you been avoiding Thunderbird? Does it lack scheduling features that you require?

[davidspalding]

Why have you been avoiding Thunderbird? Does it lack scheduling features that you require?

Other reasons. I use a PPC, which uses Microsoft Outhouse (née Outlook, codenamed "WinPad"), which means I'm running Outhouse regularly anyway, and ... it does 90% of what I need from an SMTP mail client.