MS Product Key

[28XX]

I have inherited a decent laptop from my son. It has MS Vista and came pre-loaded with Office 2007. He has only ever used it for games and internet, so he never got round to entering the Product Key to stop MS-Word from self-destructing after 25 starts. All the packaging and manuals went in the bin, our big mistake. Does anyone know how to get around this without spending £110 on a new disk?

 

Thanks in anticipation,

 

Steve.

[beast66606]

Not legally I'm afraid.

[houseman]

contact the laptops maker with the seral number and they will send you a recovery disk in which will be a file with all product keys

regards

houseman

[Wherry Lines]

You could use OpenOffice. It's an open source equivalent to MS Office etc.

[beast66606]

contact the laptops maker with the seral number and they will send you a recovery disk in which will be a file with all product keys

regards

houseman

 

serial numbers are not held on the recovery disks, they are individually issued = put in the box on a certificate of authenticity.

[RFS]

Even though Office 2007 was preloaded, it's likely that it was only the 60-day trial version and not the full version with a permanent product key. That's how it was with my daughter's PC that she purchased a couple of years ago. This is borne out by the fact that it was going to stop working after 25 uses: had it been preloaded it would have had a proper product key.

 

If your son is a student at a recognized college you can get the software at a huge discount, eg £39 for Office 2010.

 

Have a look here - Office 2010 for Students

[Guest dilbert]

You could use OpenOffice. It's an open source equivalent to MS Office etc.

 

And very good it is as well - SUN used to support this, now it is Oracle, which can't be bad as this is a major software company ...dilbert

[BTC]

Another vote for OpenOffice.

[Red Baron]

You may as well download the free trial of 2010....

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/

 

gives you time to think about it.... suspect when you have tried Office 2010 you wont want to use Open Office which is a long way behind.

[Stubby47]

RFS - Thanks for the link, have just bought Office 2010 for my 12 year old for £40 !!

[spamcan61]

You may as well download the free trial of 2010....

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/

 

gives you time to think about it.... suspect when you have tried Office 2010 you wont want to use Open Office which is a long way behind.

 

I'll stick with OpenOffice 3.1 thanks, Office 2007 was bad enough for pointless complexity* & GUI changes, Office 2010 doesn't look any better.

 

* For the vast majority of users who don't write macros / share and version track documents across networks /etc. etc.

 

Office 97 actually does far more than I need, and I suspect I use as much or more functionality than most domestic users.

[Adrian]

And very good it is as well - SUN used to support this, now it is Oracle, which can't be bad as this is a major software company ...dilbert

The jury is still out on the case of Oracle, not a company known for it's philanthropy. They've already caused ructions with Java and MySQL which they acquired from Sun. The Open Office team have seen a few developers so there is the OO copy LibreOffice as an alternative.

[Red Baron]

 

I'll stick with OpenOffice 3.1 thanks, Office 2007 was bad enough for pointless complexity* & GUI changes, Office 2010 doesn't look any better.

 

* For the vast majority of users who don't write macros / share and version track documents across networks /etc. etc.

 

Office 97 actually does far more than I need, and I suspect I use as much or more functionality than most domestic users.

 

 

Unless you want to link to social networking sites like facebook / linkedin etc in which case 2010 is great. Never written a macro in my life but couldnt go back to older versions now. Each to their own.

[houseman]

well the oem numbers are on my disk

serial numbers are not held on the recovery disks, they are individually issued = put in the box on a certificate of authenticity.

[28XX]

Loaded Open-Office last night with no problems, except I kept getting a warning from Microsoft that it was going to restart the computer 'in order for updates to take effect', which I had to cancel to save the download. Almost as if they knew I was doing something that might lose then a sale.... Scary!

 

I had no time to try the programs out, but I will report back.

 

Many thanks to all for your advice.

 

Steve.

[spamcan61]

The only irritation I have with OO is remembering to change the file format to MSOffice compatible before saving. Having used MSOffice (97 and 2003) for years the learning curve was pretty much non existent.

[Revolution Mike]

The only irritation I have with OO is remembering to change the file format to MSOffice compatible before saving. Having used MSOffice (97 and 2003) for years the learning curve was pretty much non existent.

 

You should be able to set this as a default in the options.

 

HTH

 

Mike

[spamcan61]

You should be able to set this as a default in the options.

 

HTH

 

Mike

 

Thanks, yes I should just RTFM shouldn't I!

 

http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/writer/topic/set-default-file-format-to-ms-word