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Looking to buy Microsoft office to go on a new laptop (still deciding which to get). It will be used by 3 people for mainly school and college work.

Question is what's the difference between ms office 365 and ms office home and student 2013, which would be most suitable for me?

Thanks for any advice

elecengineer wrote:
Question is what's the difference between ms office 365 and ms office home and student 2013, which would be most suitable for me?

Not a clue, me.

Have you considered a freebie? Open Office.

https://www.openoffice.org/

iirc 365 is cloud based imho it doesn't live up to the hype and is a monthly service, 2013 is the way I would go as its more user friendly, doesn't need a internet connection and is a outright purchase

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/buy/c ... 98564.aspx

If it's for students you can get a good price here

http://www.software4students.co.uk/t/br ... 3-software

Why pay for MS Office when there's Libre Office for free? http://www.libreoffice.org/ Has almost all of the features of the MS Office suite of programs. Will open all MS Office files, eg, .doc , .docx , .pps , .xls etc. Honestly, I personally wouldn't pay for an office suite of programs ever again.

The issue with not going the Microsoft route is it puts students at a disadvantage as its used in 95% of schools and higher education its the standard, even the CLAiT and EDCL courses use office what are internationally accepted qualification

Ayjay - thanks for suggestion, unfortunately college insists on ms office, work won't be graded in any other format and I believe there can be comparability issues between open office and ms office

Flash22 - thanks for info, won't always have internet access so sounds like home and student might be better. Would also prefer outright purchase

Mod6 - thanks for the link, same price from tesco direct at the moment, plus £20 off laptop if bought at the same time

joinerjohn wrote:Why pay for MS Office when there's Libre Office for free? http://www.libreoffice.org/ Has almost all of the features of the MS Office suite of programs. Will open all MS Office files, eg, .doc , .docx , .pps , .xls etc. Honestly, I personally wouldn't pay for an office suite of programs ever again.

Thanks will have a look but concerned about comparability with college system and them having to use different programme at home and college

I've only ever once had a problem porting documents or spreadsheets from Open Office at home to MS at work - and that was a massive spreadsheet with loads of complex macros, pivot tables, multi-layered conditional statements and stuff. It was more of a full blown management system than a spreadsheet really and probably would have been originally written as a database if we'd known how big it was going to grow.

I can see how a college can insist on work being submitted in a particular format, but I think they'd actually be breaking the law if they insisted on students buying a particular product when there are free alternatives available.

For documents like essays, reports and stuff I'd tend to save and submit them as PDF's anyway.

I have to agree with what elecengineer has said.

An associate of mine had not got office, I suggested Open Office, they got that, great, open all stuff from school. Do required work save it email back to school. School sends email some days later, sorry not acceptable, wrong format.

Seems that Open Office will open anything you give it, but the MS stuff will not open anything done in Open Office. Yes it can be "worked around" at the school end, but they look at it that 350 kids send it in in MS office format and 2 don't. Its a similar story with any other NOT Office software, so they had to get MS office.

The mistake they obviously made was to save stuff from Open Office in it's own file format (.odf).

But Open Office can also save as MS format (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or as a .pdf - which it does better than MS Office. It's just a question of selecting the right option from the drop down box when saving.

https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Docume ... le_formats

having worked in a school and college these issues do come up its not the file format but the document format ie. margin's and tabs - this also leads to issues with printing, long gone are the days of word perfect

im still using office 2007 as it talks and converts to most formats if needed

someone-else wrote:I have to agree with what elecengineer has said.

An associate of mine had not got office, I suggested Open Office, they got that, great, open all stuff from school. Do required work save it email back to school. School sends email some days later, sorry not acceptable, wrong format.

Seems that Open Office will open anything you give it, but the MS stuff will not open anything done in Open Office. Yes it can be "worked around" at the school end, but they look at it that 350 kids send it in in MS office format and 2 don't. Its a similar story with any other NOT Office software, so they had to get MS office.

I find it a shame that the Adults can't open stuff that "Children" have created....

wine~o wrote:

someone-else wrote:I have to agree with what elecengineer has said.

An associate of mine had not got office, I suggested Open Office, they got that, great, open all stuff from school. Do required work save it email back to school. School sends email some days later, sorry not acceptable, wrong format.

Seems that Open Office will open anything you give it, but the MS stuff will not open anything done in Open Office. Yes it can be "worked around" at the school end, but they look at it that 350 kids send it in in MS office format and 2 don't. Its a similar story with any other NOT Office software, so they had to get MS office.

I find it a shame that the Adults can't open stuff that "Children" have created....

In my house its the teenagers that have to show me how to do stuff on the computers.............

flash22 wrote:having worked in a school and college these issues do come up its not the file format but the document format ie. margin's and tabs - this also leads to issues with printing, long gone are the days of word perfect

im still using office 2007 as it talks and converts to most formats if needed

Never had Open Office screw up margins, tabs, and other page formatting on an MS document.

But if that were to be the case why should a school be allowed to specify a paid for product over an almost identical free one?