At this point, almost everyone knows what Microsoft Office is - those programs that come already on your computer when you buy it from a big retailer because you had your tech-savvy nephew order your computer for you. But what happens when your computer crashes and you have to reinstall everything, and you can't find your original CD for MS Office anywhere? Is the Microsoft corporation going to send you a new one for free? Of course not! It's time to figure out what you really need and how much you want to spend.
Home and Student Version vs. Professional Version
One thing you may have noticed is that there is a
HUGE price tag difference between the
Home and Student and
Professional versions ($85 vs $385 kind of difference), and while the American consumer is normally in the
the more I pay the better it is mindset, does that really hold up here? The answer, quite simply, is that you need to figure out what programs you really are looking for. The typical home user is going to use
Word a lot, along with
PowerPoint for those class presentations and
Excel for that one math teacher who is also a closet computer dork. If you use Microsoft Office at work, however, you may also wind up using it for your email and simple databasing. Here's what each version offers:
Home and Student - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote
Professional - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, Outlook w/ Business Contact Manager, Publisher
So which version do you get?
If you really are just going to use
Word, just get
Home and Student. If you try and pick up
Word by itself, it's going to be right around the same cost, plus you won't get
Excel,
PowerPoint, or
OneNote. While you may not think you will ever use these programs, you may be surprised to find out how useful they are in everyday life (for example, you can build an
Excel workbook to track your personal finances, or you can use
PowerPoint to put together a funny presentation of pictures and words for your family reunion next summer!). However, if you think that you are going to want to use
Outlook for your email, and try and set up a small database at home for something, and try and manage project time lines, then I would go and pick up
Professional.
As a side note, though, if you want to use
Word,
Excel, and
Outlook, pick up
Home and Student and then go buy a separate copy of
Outlook, you're going to wind up spending $150-$200 instead of $350-$400 for
Professional.
So What Are All Of These Programs Good For?
Now you're hooked. You think that you have to have
Microsoft Office because everyone who is hip and cool has it. Well right-on, sister! Let's dive into what these buzz-word products that I keep rambling on about are!
Word
Aside from being popular slang, what does this program really do?
Word is the program that allows you to type out documents and papers. When your teenager has to write essays, they do it in
Word. When you want to write a fax out on your computer to make it legible since no one can read your handwriting, you do it in
Word. When you want to make a calendar and print it out so that it just has the dates since the pictures of half-naked firemen are apparently "Not Work Appropriate", you do it in
Word. When you need to make a resume because you violently disagreed with their assessment of your firemen, you do it in
Word. You get the idea.
Microsoft Word is a word document program that allows you to type anything you want and have it appear on the screen, in any format you can think of (once you figure out how to set that format, of course).
Excel
This one goes out to all the numbers people out there!
Excel is a very powerful tool that allows you to build spreadsheets. Whether you are trying to dig through lots of data, or just trying to keep track of your personal finances,
Excel is the place to do it! It is a program that does more than just addition and subtraction - the built in functions can be very powerful (and impressive!) once you figure out how to use them! If you have questions about
Excel functions,
I wrote a piece explaining all that I could think of. If you're not, don't click on the link and move on!
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is used to make presentations (you know those projected things that your boss always gives and blabbers away at and you never pay attention to? Yeah...
PowerPoint). They can be as simple and boring as paragraphs on a slide (terrible presentation etiquette...) and as exciting as having flying words, appearing pictures, sounds in the background, and disappearing slides (use judgment and figure out your audience's bells-and-whistles tolerance level).
OneNote
I'm not in school anymore, so I unfortunately haven't tried out
OneNote. In my day, we just used
Word and a set of folders. That doesn't mean, though, that I cannot tell you what it is...
OneNote is a program designed to help you with school notes (especially since more and more students are bringing laptops to call) and makes an effort to keep you organized (you can keep notes, pictures, and sound files (so if you have a microphone you can just record yourself saying something and keep it there). The biggest difference with
OneNote and
Word for text is that with
OneNote you can just click anywhere and type, whereas you need to keep it somewhat structured with
Word.
OneNote is a great example of Microsoft trying to keep up with the times.
2003 vs. 2007
You've probably heard a lot about
Office 2007, and if you've been reading comparison reviews (to 2003), chances are that you've heard a lot of negative things about
Office 2007. While "upgrading" from Windows XP to Windows Vista has basically sent people backwards and left a bad taste in virtually everyone's mouth,
Office 2007 actually is an evolution of
Office 2003. Unfortunately, the programs are a little more colorful, which has become associated with Vista, which is definitely a negative. People are still having trouble trying to navigate around
Office 2007 after they have become accustomed to
2003, so they will naturally complain about that, but if it wasn't any different is would not really be an upgrade, now would it? The bottom line is
Office 2007 is definitely an improvement over
Office 2003, and you may hear some negative things about it while people are still trying to figure it out, but in the end it will be much better and more powerful than its predecessor.
Overall
Office 2007 is a very powerful group of programs that builds off of the previous Microsoft Office platform. Whether you are looking for a word document editor (
Word), something to analyze data with (
Excel), a program to help you create presentations that will wow colleagues (
PowerPoint), or simply trying to stay organized with class notes (
OneNote),
Office 2007 Home and Student Version has what you need at a very affordable price!
