word for windows

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I am looking for the pros and cons between the "office home and student 2007" program and the "office professional 2007" - just researching my options.

One is the price. I want to know if one is favoured over the other, or if anyone has run across a review site?

All I need is the actual word program, but I have been told a standalone doesn't exist??

As well, does office prof. take out the existing system (say running the most ancient and venerable "corel" suite...? ) Like I say, I am really not looking to overhaul an entire system, but then again I don't want to spend x amount of money and find out y should have been spent down the road.

If you have any opinions either way, let me know:)

Honestly, is there any reason why you wouldn't just use one of the FREE alternatives?

OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
This is the most "developed" and up to date office alternative around with lots of users.

IBM Lotus Symphony
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home
This offering has the backing of IBM and is essentially a slightly stripped down version of OpenOffice with a much better user interface. They dropped some of the applications in order to concentrate on the ones which were most critical.

Google Docs
http://docs.google.com/
This is a lighter still suite but it has one amazing capability. It stores the documents online. Sure, you can download them if you want but because it stores them online, you can share (or not) them with everyone, or just with specific people. Also, you never forget your documents because you can access them in seconds from anywhere - even from your mobile phone.

All are compatible with Microsoft's software and with the newer formats too (ODF for example).

Unless it has to be MS Office, spend your money on something worthwhile - and if it has to be Office, go for the home/student edition. There's nothing in the professional edition that you're likely to need.

^ what he said. If not satisfied, there are also online versions:
http://mashable.com/2008/02/11/13-word-processors/

I second the vote for OpenOffice. It's free, and it is compatible with everything.

If you must have MS Word, get whatever the cheapest MS Office suite is, because they will all have Word and there will be no new features added to Word when you buy a more expensive office suite. They just add other apps like Publisher and Access that you are unlikely ever to need.

Open Office is in fact very good and free but the cheapest offering from MS is Works which when I last looked had Word in it.

Traditionally the Word Processor in MS Works hasn't been entirely compatible with Microsoft Word. This may have changed but just in case, I'd suggest that you check it out before purchasing.

I'd still recommend the free stuff first though. If nothing else, it costs nothing to try them and if they're unsuitable, then you can start handing over money.

Don't get sucked into a MS trial. What happens there is that the software stops working after a while and leaves quite a mess on your machine.

The Home version has;
Excel (spreadsheet)
PowerPoint (presentation software)
OneNote (digital notebook)
Word (word processor)

The pro version has;
Access (database)
Excel (spreadsheet)
Outlook (email and collaboration client)
PowerPoint (presentation software)
Publisher (desktop publishing)
Word (word processor)

If all you want is Word then you could go for the cheapest option, however Outlook is a very piece of kit but it might be overkill for your needs.

Installing Office won't remove other products like your Corel system. If you look on Microsoft's site there are comparison details of the various Office suits.

Outlook has absolutely NO use at all. It's a virus-ridden piece of rubbish software that you should NEVER install on your system.

If you can, use an online email proggie - like Gmail - which is FREE

If you have to use an offline reader, try Mozilla Thunderbird - which is FREE

For all my personal stuff I use Gmail, for untrustworthy stuff I use Hotmail and for work I use Lotus Notes 8.5.

Another tip: If you have multiple people who want to try it, get the student/teacher edition. Nearly all the smaller stores have it, and it comes with a 3 computer key. If you have family that needs word as well, then thats the way to go.

I've noticed that OO seems to have a spot of trouble with the new .docx that M$ is using... it's possible a bug fix got it, as I noticed it about a month or so ago, but if you're using it for school, best to just buy Office suite and claim it on your taxes.

For me, OOo (both 2.4 and 3.0) have always been fine with .docx. Just doesn't seem to have an option to write a .docx, but that doesn't matter since even Office2007 can read files from the previous version of Word.

Is nowhere on the net free from idiot fanboys?

Hell no, we wont go.

The fact is, something that downloads emails and attachments before you give consent, even if it doesnt run them, doesnt make much sense. I am sure you can turn that feature off, but then its no better than just using web based email.

One does not let a suspicious character in their house, then keep a close eye on them. Nor does someone let random folk come into their house and then decide which make good friends. So it is with data on your computer.

Frankly my router has more important things to do than download things I am not interested in. That is what I pay my service provider and the host of my email for.

If that makes me an idiot, what then are you?

Thanks for the input:).

My major problem is that I have off-site typing coming in, done in a windows suite, but our office runs wordperfect. Right now I have to open the document (which thankfully I do have conversion software on my machine), fix the margins, page breaks, etc and save it under wordperfect. If I don't do the final step of saving it in wordperfect, then when the recipient opens the document on the other end, edits, saves and drops it back into the common shared file, for some reason I can't open it again (I have to go into their office to print or view, and that is a little tricky to do). I don't think he will allow me to uninstall his word program just to make my life easier, either, but I seem to be doing a lot of busy work on my end (don't ask me why they just didn't keep everything homogenous throughout the office, I guess that is too easy).

What I am hoping to achieve is to be able to put the off site info into the MS word, the recipient can view it there, and then save it to the same program, saving me a lot of re-formating (which cuts into my day, obviously).

That is my hope, anyway. Also, I have to keep in mind that another boss does want to eventually be able to have the front desk go to an electronic date book that is accessible to all on the front desk. I guess I have to be thinking of economics as well. I would love to use a freebee, but unfortunately it would just add another level of compatibility issues to an already cumbersome system, sigh.

Thanks for the input, it has given me a lot of things to think about

@fuzzy: she's a troll

I hope I am just being paranoid - this wasn't directed towards me....was it?

No, it was directed at AS4L, who has posted derisive comments about "fanboys" of various open-source projects several times. I wouldn't call her a "troll," though. Just someone who's annoyed with fanboyism.