Missed Opportunity?

I was in a Goodwill store this weekend and what did I see nestled among the $3 used CDs. Microsoft Office 97 Professional, with the CD key sticker attached! I was tempted to plunk down the $3 since I only have XP Home Edition with Microsoft Works and would not mind having Word 97.

I already have Office 95 Standard and Microsoft Access 97. I use Office XP at work and find that Access 2002 is an incremental improvement over Access 97. They did not fix anything visible that I wanted fixed (better management of import specifications). The only significant change seemed to be making it unable to save databases in a format readable by Access 97.

Since I didn't want Powerpoint, since Outlook Express 6.0 is safer than full Outlook 97, and since I already owned Access 97, it would have meant purchasing Word 97 for $3 to use instead of the Microsoft Works that came with my XP. I don't use the Office Standard for any reason except to allow me to install Access 97, which for some reason thinks its an upgrade.

In the end I decided against it, but I might change my mind. I still play around with Access 97 and it would be nice not to have to install an old copy of Office just to have a qualifying product. I also think that Word 97 is the benchmark of Microsoft Office and I would not mind having full use of templates and such.

I'm thinking of taking my $3 back there. Thanks to the Supreme Court's 'first sale' doctrine, it would give me a full legal license.

C'mon Rich, for three bucks it's worth the bragging rights. You could even write a book, " The Art Of The Deal". No....wait... that's been done. Well it would still be a good story prop. Go for it. :D

Then again, $3 for what most people use can be a good thing.

Honestly, I don't see much usage for Office 2000, XP, or 2003. I still have Office 2000 Pro on my laptop, because XP was a nightmare to configure, and because I'll wait for a new x86 PC to get 2003. Dell practically gives it away with Optiplex desktops, and IBM does the same with ThinkPad laptops.

Since my next computer will more than likely be another ThinkPad, I can wait :).

I still keep it around, however. There are a lot of people that run it. Especially with the number of corporate and small vertical apps that use it as a back end.

Mitch

Note: I'm an evangelist.

I thought that the opportunity you missed was reselling Office97 on eBay or something, although I have no idea whether that would actually work. I assumed that for your personal use you would use Abiword with wvWare.

I'm surprised more people haven't found out about OpenOffice by now. Free. Works well. Can edit Microsoft Word and Excel files. I use it all the time. Doesn't have a Access support though.

Look for it here Open Office

Heya,

My issue is that OpenOffice is about 80% of what Office really can open and read. There are some Microsoft Office documents that it cannot open, and there are some Office documents it can open that Microsoft Office cannot.

Pretty weird. However, when you start dealing heavily with embedded OLE in documents, and all the other niceties that your customers can and will put in Word documents, OpenOffice is not an option.

However, I do keep both around. OpenOffice runs on my Mac (rather badly though X11), and I use Office 2000 and XP on the home systems. I'm looking to upgrade to 2003 on the ThinkPad soon though.

Yes I also keep an Office 97 machine around. I have reason to :).

Mitch