MS Office 2007

[Turbineguy]

So I ordered it to go along with my new laptop (Windows 7). But when I tried to plug in the product code, it did not work. Product ckey not recognized. This seems to be an old and well known problem and indeed depending on how much time you want to waste, probably resolvable.

Unfortunately after three hours of visiting websites, following convoluted instructions, phone calls which directed me to call other numbers, ending nowhere, it occurred to me.

Eureka!

What would Supply Side Jesus do? Send the product back to the vendor for a refund. After all, Microsoft has no respect for my time and indeed loses nothing by wasting it. But if the vendors get this stuff back as defective costing them money they may tell MS to clean up their act.

I suggested a number of years ago to MS that they should have their help line leave you on hold for less time than it took to install Linux. They were not amused and seem to have made the problem worse.

See, Progressives can do this supply-side shit too.

[meegbear]

1. And did the vendor take it back?

[Turbineguy]

4. 2nd day air.

Tigerdirect.com.

They have always been excellent.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. This is an opportunity to try OpenOffice instead. Free, so if you don't like it you lost nothing.

Realistically, it'll only cause problems if you do esoteric financial mumbo-jumbo programming in Excel. Otherwise, works like a charm:

http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

[Turbineguy]

5. I've tried that

with mixed success as you say the excel mumbo-jumbo gets screwy. Also I don't know how well Powerpoint works and I don't have time to find out. In the mean time, I installed the familiar Office Pro 2003.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

6. You're not missing much by sticking with 2003.

I installed 2007 on a Vista laptop with no trouble. Been using Office since '97 and the intervening updates have been great; but 2007's interface is annoying.

[CatholicEdHead]

8. 2010's does not change that much

You can minimize the tabs, and the Ribbon on the top left is now an full page of settings. I like it better than 2007, but 2003 is still better. (Using the Beta of 2010 right now).

[billyoc]

3. Let me know if you have any problems installing GNU/Linux.

micros~1 free since '90.

[Turbineguy]

7. I have a lot of respect for people who can use that OS

But I'm pretty much stuck with MS Windows.