Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office XP Standard [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

My company's Microsoft rep recently gave me a T-shirt that reads "Office XP - upgrade today!". I write this review to reclaim my soul. Office XP is NOT a necessary upgrade, nor is it necessarily the best option for a new system.

A point-by-point comparison of the latest and the last version of the suite is not necessary, as they are virtually identical. Aside from minor enhancements, the only noticeable new feature is a MS Works-like "task pane" which takes up valuable screen real estate (thankfully, it is easily disabled). Perhaps the most talked about aspects of the new Office are the Activation Wizard (which restricts multiple installations) and the fact that "Clippy" doesn't appear as often. I am rather annoyed that I will probably have to call Redmond after upgrading my new PC, but given rampant software piracy, I understand the motivation (let he who has no "offsite backups" cast the first stone). And let's face facts: if you can't figure out how to turn off the talking paper clip, you probably need the talking paper clip!

Bottom line: the money you save buying Office 2000 will more than make up for any "features" in XP you miss. Move quickly – soon you won’t have the choice.

I was about to buy this product since its the one I use at the office, but when I looked at the price I did some research first.
Why would I buy it, when I can get very similar alternatives for much less like StarOffice? of even for free (OpenOffice). It does have nice features but most of them I have never used. I have been using OpenOffice for the past 3 months and I haven't missed a feature yet. If you are buying this office suite I would recommend you try OpenOffice first, it could save you a lot of money.

I bought this software 8 months ago. My hard drive went bad recently. I tried to install this software again on my NEW hard drive. YOU CAN'T!! I wasted hundreds of dollars on a product I can't use now! I called to have my registration trasfered to my new computer but Microsoft won't let me transfer my registration or have the software on two PC's. WHAT A BUNCH OF BULL! DON'T BUY THIS VERSION! Not only is there the above problem but there are many better programs available, with more advantages, cheaper price and no hassle. I'm not anti-Microsoft but this experience has shown me what this company stands for.

I mean have you ever used more then a fraction of Office features? When my wordpad at hope stopped to recognize office xp file format (which was not a problem with previous version of the office) I lookd for an alternative and I found one, for free: an application package from openoffice.org. 50 MB file reads md .doc format and doeas it all for free and very well.

My first car in 1990 cost $$$ and was worth every penny. Microsoft Office, XP or other, not so much. It's good, but not compared to its price, and therefore not a good choice. If you haven't tried StarOffice or OpenOffice.org yet, or haven't tried the latest release, just do it. Unless you're a turbo macro user, or create feature-length animations in PowerPoint, you're spending a month's rent for nothing by buying MS Office.

Plus, as other reviewers have mentioned, with this version you have to register and activate it before it expires. No more MS Office sharing.

So anyway, be forewarned about the registration issue, and think about whether it's really worth twice as much as a rusty but dependable Datsun.

Not only do we continue to buy this overpriced software, but it continues to explode for no adequately explored reason, as well.

As long as there was no actual choice, if one had to create Word files, then at least it made sense to use MS Office.

However, now there is no reason to continue with the money flushing. StarOffice is a great deal cheaper, works generally the same way, reads and creates Word Excel and PowerPoint files, and is all in all an entirely adequate product.

And yes, StarOffice runs on Windows too.

Microsoft Office XP Standard offers four essential tools that allows the user to create professional looking documents, resumes, letters etc. It also has powerful tools for mail merge, document recovery ( so if a blue screen attack happens it will recover your document). It also has a speech recoginition technology, which you have to train before you can actually start telling it what to do. Microsoft Excel, is a very essential program that makes adding up and analyzing numbers very easy, you are able to create chart's with your numbers for formal presentation. Microsoft Excel has become like a industry standard spreadsheet program so that at least should make you think about buying this suite. It also contains features for publishing your data on the web. Microsoft Outlook is a great e-mail program or PIM that has everything in one place, you are able to have multiple accounts without having to sign in multiple times separately into different e-mail services, Outlooks scheduling features are truly amazing when it comes to organizing your life. Microsoft PowerPoint is a great program for creating presentations, with its fantastic effects, PowerPoint 2002, especially is worth the buy, you will have a lot of fun with this product alone! Over all the new features in Office XP it self will make it a great buy for first time users, things such as task pane which allows users to work more faster. It would have been nice to add Microsoft Access, which is a great database program but, you have to look to the Professional edition of Office XP for that program. If the price of the program scares you and you don't have the money and only want essential tools look to Microsoft Works Suite 2002, a great set of integrated tools, which offers the complete version of Microsoft Word and a spreadsheet, database etc at a [lowe] price, ... check out the review!

XP is the beginning of the end as far as system privacy is concercned and a slew of other problems. Here are several reasons why you shouldn't use XP.

1: General Exclusivity

Manufacturers are requested to submit your drivers directly to Microsoft for approval before you try to peddle them to consumers.

2: Media Player 8

MP8 might lock out other codecs like MP3 and not allow them to make copies of their own music that they can play from their own hard drives. It is not so much about what MP8 can do, it is about what it can prevent us from doing with music and video that we already paid for.

3: Missing Features

Are we going to have a backup program like we did in the old days? Are we going to get dual monitor support in the home version like Windows 98 SE has? Are we going to get back the basic fax functionality we used to have? In order to get those features, we will have to buy a "Plus Pack" of some kind for another 50 dollars. They stripped those features from the home version and are forcing us to pay an extra 100 or 200 dollars to get the professional version.

4: Bundling Restrictions And Excessive Integration

Many of us feel uncomfortable that we are forced to use IE instead of Opera or Netscape browsers. We don't want all of that internet bloat-ware bundled into the basic operating system. We want to be able to uninstall IE and Outlook Express whenever we feel the urge. Not that we will necessarily, because both of those products are actually pretty good in their 6.x versions, but we want the option. What it boils down to is that we just want control over our Internet experience and our own applications. Is that too much to ask?

5: Security

We all know how insecure Outlook and IIS have been, but there are now concerns about changes in the XP Home Edition (and possibly other versions) that will provide support for unrestricted, full raw sockets. This is VERY scary.

6: Product Activation

This is a system designed primarily to prevent casual piracy. You know how you had to go buy a full copy of Windows 98 SE at the store because all your new computer came with was some stupid restore disk? You know how you went ahead and installed that copy of Windows 98 SE on your original machine as well as on the new one you just bought? Well, this technology will stop you from doing that. Why all the fuss? Because in part, people do pirate operating systems on a casual basis. They hate that they are forced to pay upgrade fees for what they consider to be bug fixes anyway. They hate that they have to put up with those bloated, OEM installs from Dell, Gateway and others who put everything from AOL to Walmart advertisements in the Start menu. They want to be able to do a clean install of the basic OS without all of that junk getting in the way, so they take a copy that they bought or got from a friend and use that single copy to install it on all of their machines. After all, almost every single computer you can buy comes with Windows on it, so why can't you just install the version you want the way you want and be done with it? Because according to the licensing terms, that is totally illegal, that's why.

I am not Anti-Microsoft just anti XP. Buyer beware.

If you have followed Microsoft Office from version to version you may have noticed something: it gets BIGGER and BIGGER and BIGGER.

Office 95, office 97, Office 2000, and now Office XP, continue the trend towards larger, more complex software on each release. You have to keep upgrading your PC every year or two so the "Microsoft Office of the year" runs ok on your system.

I got a shrinkwrapped MS Office XP box with my last computer (it was a bundle at a special store price). Before opening the shinrwrap, I asked the store manager if I could use the demo system they had on display, which had Office XP installed. After seeing that there were no improvements from previous versions, and that disk space usage was higher than Office 97, I decided it was time to move on.

... Bottom line: StarOffice 6.0 costs a fraction of MS Office, uses a fraction of the hd space and ram of MS Office (which means StarOffice will run OK on systems where Microsoft Office XP is dog-slow), StarOffice 6.0 reads and writes all Microsoft office file formats, and lets you install LEGALLY, with NO ACTIVATION WHATSOEVER, your StarOffice suite on 5 machines, with no extra cost. To top all this, the look-and-feel is essentially the same, no re-learning curve!.

Oh, I almost forgot, I saved $.. more, because StarOffice 6.0 includes templates for all AVERY LABELS, no need to purchase "Avery LabelPro" software like I had planned to do.

i strongly disliked the interface and the total re work of office 2007. i guess when u have an old comfortable pair of shoes. . . thats why i sought out this xp version. less complicated