Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
Customer reviews
Same product, half the price. I almost bought this online from microsoft, until I decided to browse around. Even with 2 day shipping, I still saved $70!
Love It!. I love the new Office suite – Sure, it takes some getting use to, but it is awesome once you start to get familiar with it!
Installation Instructions. I bought this product last week. Saw an error message during the installation process :
” Error 1311: Source file not found E:\SKU112.CAB. Verify that the file exists and that you can access it.”
I later found out from Microsoft help desk that the message means one has to remove the old Microsoft Office Program (Office 2003) from the computer first before installation. What is so misleading is that during installation the descriptions on screen clearly stated that the old version was AUTOMATICALLY removed.
Better installation instructions or ordinary language error messages could have made the installation process so much easier.
A Bargin for the Price. When I noticed that Office had the new Powerpoint included, I knew I had to order one of the first copies. I have looked at all four applications that come with Office and think it is well worth the cost. I installed Vista Home Premium on my computer first.
They both work great on my Dell Inspiron E1505 with 1 Mb of RAM with a somewhat limited 80 Gb HD.
First “must have” since Office 97. I will admit, I was a bit nervous about using Office 2007 as it was released at the same time as the whole Vista debacle. Fear not. I bought Office 2007 Home and Student edition for my wife who is going to school online. I have been using Office since Office 95 and I think this is the most significant upgrade since Office 97. Previously I had been using Office XP, but after I bought a new laptop with Vista 2 years ago, which I subsequently upgraded to Windows 7 I thought it was time for a change. Office XP seemed to have a few glitches on the newer versions of Windows, namely Outlook not saving passwords and while this isn’t Windows specific, it also had issues with the new daylight saving time rules. While this edition does not include Outlook, it is not a big deal for me since I can simply use Windows Mail or Thunderbird.
The new interface is an improvement. Yes it does take some time to get used to especially if you have spent significant amounts of time learning/using older versions of Office. It took me about a half hour to get used to it. Plus the help system is excellent for those hard to find features.
Clippy has finally been banished! I can’t tell you how much I hated that stupid animated paper clip.
I would have to say that while the whole suite has been significantly upgraded that Excel and PowerPoint have been improved the most. I used to be in charge of putting the lyrics to songs in a presentation each week for my church group using PowerPoint and I seriously could do it in half the the time now. I took an “expert level” Excel class written for Excel 2002 and had 2007 been out at the time, again it would have been a huge time saver.
The only drawback I can see to this suite is that if you are using Windows XP, speech recognition has been removed from Office and become a feature of Vista or later. I don’t use that feature and I run Windows 7 so it doesn’t affect me. Also be aware that the new file formats that Office uses by default now are only readable by Office 2007. So if you need to share files with people using Office 2003 or earlier, just make sure to save using the *.doc format, not *.docx.
Some people have complained about the speed on even high end hardware. I don’t find Office 2007 to be any slower than Office XP, in fact I find the opposite to be the case. I guess as long as you keep Windows and Office up to date through Windows Update you will be fine.
I would highly recommend you download the free 60 day trial version (which is full featured, not “crippled”) to see how it works for you, then you can buy it at a later date. That is what we did. Also, the Home edition can be installed on up to 3 computers, another selling point for me as Office XP was locked down to my machine.
I should probably make it known that I am neither a Microsoft employee or a shareholder so I have no agenda behind my positive review of this product.