How can you install Office with no disk drive?

tia86

Hi

I am thinking of buying a Dell Inspiron 15 as a cheap laptop but would like to put Microsoft office on it but not sure how you do this as it has no disk drive. Would I still be able to buy the box in a shop such as Curry's and find instructions to do online or is the disk needed? Tried looking on the office website but am rather confused by it.

Thanks

jazzy

I copied my office CD onto to a USB pendrive and run it from the pendrive

HappyMJ

Download it.

You only need the code from inside the box to activate it properly.

Personally, I use OpenOffice which is very similar to Microsoft's product but it's open source and free. It does at the very least all the basic functions that Word and Excel does which is al that I require. Actually all I really require for a word processor is Wordpad but I do also need a spreadsheet program.

matttye

You can buy and download it from here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/home-and-student/#FAQs

Edit: As above, I too use OpenOffice and it's fine for my needs at home. Not sure whether it would be good enough for my work.

tia86

Happy do you mean I still need to buy a box??

Thanks for the link Matty

There are usually offers to buy the box in shops so could either of you clarify if I can still buy this and it will have the code as Happy mentioned or if I need to pay Microsoft their full price?

Thanks

securityguy

And DVD drives are going. There's now now serious Mac fitted with one (they're continuing to sell the 13" Pro with a DVD drive, rather in the manner that Ford kept the production line for Escorts going for a few years to avoid frightening old people with the scary Focus). You might recall that people made "oh, silly Apple, everyone knows you won't be able to sell computers without one" noises when the original iMac dropped having a floppy drive. Increasingly Windows laptops don't have them either and they'll be gone from desktops in a couple of years. If you need one, plug in a USB DVD drive. But realistically, just download it. I've got one "fitted" DVD drive on the six machines in the house, but I can't think of the last time it was used.

NiftyDigits

I've a better idea. Buy this Medion Akoya E6234 with Microsoft office 2010 pre-installed for £170.99

Not only is it more powerful than the DELL(nearly double the processing power), but it has an optical disc drive, Bluetooth and an Ethernet/LAN connector. It is also less expensive and has the same full 12 month warranty.

The 'catch' is that it is a 'no fault' customer return for ASDA. So it cannot be resold as new. So you are getting a massive discount.
The Office licence alone can go for £70.
Which means that you are virtually paying £100 for the laptop.
A serious bargain.

Full specs here

The only advantage to the DELL is that it perhaps has a longer battery life, as it has, effectively, a Netbook's processor.

tia86

Thanks nifty, am just about to post if any one had any better laptop choices than the Dell

agrinnall

I installed Office 2010 as a download 4 years ago so I can't imagine there would be any great difficulty doing so now, as long as you have a reasonable connection speed. The whole transaction was done electronically, with the activation code sent by email.