question about windows 8 and office home & student 2013

richmondhamptoncourt

Hello

I would appreciate any feedback. My 14 year old daughter needs a laptop for school (school work, internet, powerpoint etc) and she has earmarked the HP Pavilion 17 e031sa with the larger screen from John Lewis for £479 (I get a 15% discount as my husband works in JL). Its got windows 8 but she will need a microsoft office software package. I have office 2007 but am not sure if that is compatible with windows 8. The salesman in JL thought not. Office home and student 2013 is £89 in J at the moment less the 15%. Any feedback on the pc or compatibility welcome.

Richmond

Jivesinger

richmondhamptoncourt wrote: »

I have office 2007 but am not sure if that is compatible with windows 8. The salesman in JL thought not.

The JL Salesman is incorrect.

Office 2007 should work fine with Windows 8 (although curiously the "Ultimate" edition seems to have problems, but I'm guessing that's not the version you have).

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/ProductDetailsViewer?Name=Microsoft%20Office%202007%20Standard&vendor=Microsoft&Locale=1033%2C2057%2C3081%2C4105%2C16393&ModelOrVersion=12&BreadCrumbPath=office%202007&LastSearchTerm=office%2B2007&Type=Software&tempOsid=Windows%208


http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/ProductDetailsViewer?Name=Microsoft%20Office%20Word%202007%20Home%20and%20Student&vendor=Microsoft&Locale=1033%2C2057%2C3081%2C4105%2C16393&ModelOrVersion=12&BreadCrumbPath=office%202007%20home%20and%20student&LastSearchTerm=office%2B2007%2Bhome%2Band%2Bstudent&Type=Software&tempOsid=Windows%208.1

The earlier version, Office 2003, is officially not compatible with Windows 8 (although I use it and haven't really noticed any problems).

cookie365

Office 2003 isn't incompatible with Windows 8 - just 'not supported'.

Which means it will probably work just fine, but if not Microsoft won't take responsibility.

Jivesinger

cookie365 wrote: »

Office 2003 isn't incompatible with Windows 8 - just 'not supported'.

Which means it will probably work just fine, but if not Microsoft won't take responsibility.

Officially, it's not compatible, which is stronger than just saying it's not supported.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2777626

As you say it will probably work fine (and seems to do so in my experience).

It goes out of support in April 2014 for all operating systems in any case.

richmondhamptoncourt

Thanks thats helpful about office 2007. I just need my daughter to check if there is anything in the 2013 version that she needs that is not in the 2007 one.

WilliamO

The cosmetic look of 2013 versus 2007 is big, but IMHO better and easier to use; especially when inserting charts and so on. With office 2013 it will be more up-to-date, cloud based, etc than office 2007. If your daughter was jumping from 2007 to 2010 I would say stick with 2007 but with 2013 being a major difference from 2007 I would go with 2013. Mainly because of ease of use and the cloud.........saying all this the school has to keep up with the times too......a few years ago I saw schools still using XP

richmondhamptoncourt

Thanks Williamo - my daughter is still keen to get the 2013 version and I am still debating the issue. Have not yet bought the laptop (HP Pavillion 17) as still considering as well. Its all a fair amount of money so I want to be sure its suitable.

ThemeOne

You can definitely run Office 2007 on Windows 8, subject of course to the Office 2007 licence being transferable to the new machine.

There are differences with Office 2013 of course though, to be honest, you would probably notice very little difference in core functionality. Probably the main difference is that Office 2007 was the last version not to use the "Backstage view" which in my view is more hindrance than help!

grizzly1911

When my daughter was doing her !!! we had some compatibility issues as we were on 2007 and the College on 2010. She was accessing a lot of material off their servers.

Whether it was how the source documents were saved, I don't know but the issue resolved when we upgraded to 2010 on XP at the time. We went for the 3 user edition so we could all benefit.

2010 has since been loaded without problem onto Windows 8 hopefully obviating the need for an upgrade to 2013.

prowla

If Microsoft want to release incompatible versions of their OS and try and force you to upgrade your apps to suit, then you don't have to play their game.

Office works fine on Windows 7, so perhaps that is the direction to take.

Windows 7 is a better OS than Windows 8 anyway.

macman

Why not just install Libre Office, which is fully compatible with MS Office files for all the functions that most people ever use-and entirely free?