Works probably won't cut it, but Open Office should. It's really up to your educational institution. You might also want to look at this site. You may be able to purchase Office for a lot less than you think.
Open Office does a reasonably good job. Set the default save options to Word 2003, PowerPoint 2003, etc.. Don't use the OO native formats. One problem may be with macros in Excel. Depending upon the courses you take, that may or may not be a problem. MS Works won't cut it at all.
You might be able to get a copy of Office 2003 really cheap as people move to Office 2007. Office 2007 is a total mess and not really worth it if you have to buy a copy for real money.
Seconded, I've been using Open Office for a couple of years and it can do pretty much everything that an average MS Officer can do. The only real difference comes when you want to do more advanced things in which case Open Office doesn't have all of MS Office's customization, intergration and programming features.
This said, unless you are doing an IT course or a computer based accountancy course (EG heavy use of Excel), you won't miss anything by moving to Open Office. The interface is a little different, but you'll get used to it in no time.
Rebel9
2.9K Posts
0
February 16th, 2008 03:00
Works probably won't cut it, but Open Office should. It's really up to your educational institution. You might also want to look at this site. You may be able to purchase Office for a lot less than you think.
mwfanelli2
83 Posts
0
February 16th, 2008 21:00
You might be able to get a copy of Office 2003 really cheap as people move to Office 2007. Office 2007 is a total mess and not really worth it if you have to buy a copy for real money.
KnaufIT
2 Intern
•
318 Posts
0
February 22nd, 2008 15:00
Seconded, I've been using Open Office for a couple of years and it can do pretty much everything that an average MS Officer can do. The only real difference comes when you want to do more advanced things in which case Open Office doesn't have all of MS Office's customization, intergration and programming features.
This said, unless you are doing an IT course or a computer based accountancy course (EG heavy use of Excel), you won't miss anything by moving to Open Office. The interface is a little different, but you'll get used to it in no time.