Should I buy Microsoft Office 2007??

Question

I really want it for school, and I know I could create some nice looking power points and word documents, its just.. its like $125 and I dont know if thats worth it..

Answer 1

I agree that you should try out some alternatives. Open office .org is a really smart choice over Office. The greatst thing about it is that its absolutely free.

You can find a good list of such alternative programs here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites
See which one works for you based on effectiveness-price factor, and then decide.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

If you need to share files with other users of Microsoft Office 2007 then you should not get OpenOffice as it will not open the new xml format files from Microsoft.

OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with older versions of Office either, there are hundreds of small glitches that will cause problems if you try to share files with others.

So, if you need to collaborate with other users of Word and PowerPoint, buy Microsoft. Otherwise OpenOffice is a good alternative as is IBM Symphony which is also free.

Answer 3

Just get open office. It's a free, complete clone of MS office.
http://www.openoffice.org/