<p>Looking at the notebook deals UM offers, the only value to buying from them seems to be the Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition, which is pretty expensive. </p>
<p>I was wondering would you say that Works 8.5 is sufficient for college purposes? Or is the enterprise edition recommended/needed?</p>
<p>If you want a deal on an office suite, why not check out Open Office? It is free, open source, and available on most platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).</p>
<p>Edit: <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.openoffice.org/</a></p>
<p>If you really want microsoft office, you can still get the software only for under $50 from UM and just install it yourself.</p>
<p>all you need is office home and student.. so don't push for their laptops just because they have enterprise on them</p>
<p>thx rugbywinger, i guess I'll just but whatever software from UM if it really
becomes necessary. I was thinking damn it would be awesome to buy as many copies of the cheaper priced software and sell it for a profit on ebay or something, but then I noticed you could only buy up to 2 copies of any software.</p>
<p>I saw there was a user agreement that says if you leave/graduate/ transfer from UofM, you forfeit the software license and must remove it from your computer unless you are graduating before November 2007. </p>
<p>We will probably still get the $50 package since we are planning on 4 years!</p>
<p>Don't use Microsoft Works, it's an oxymoron, cuz it doesn't. </p>
<p>Get Office for a cheap price. If you still dont want to shell out the money for it, get Open Office, as mentioned above. It's a excellent free replacement for MS Office.</p>
<p>It might say that you have to remove the software if you leave the university, but honestly, there is no way in hell they would/could ever enforce that.</p>
<p>The Inspirons currently have free upgrades to 2GB RAM and 160 GB hard disks. Great Value!</p>
<p>I'd be really careful about trying to "resell" things like Microsoft office. You might need that extra copy--say, what if you load it on two machines, and then one crashes? You'll need to buy it again. When you're done, you're DONE, and it doesn't matter whether it's something innocent like a hard drive crash or you purchased a new computer. Don't squander your purchase limits on software.</p>
<p>^ This is why open source software is superior to that of proprietary software. </p>
<p>Get Open Office, you can download it as many times as you want and its not limited to only a couple installs. It's free too.</p>
<p>Is open office exactly like MS Office? Is it any different?</p>
<p>Open Office is almost exactly like MS Office, and it works with MS Office document formats (.doc). It's also installed on all the University computers to ensure full compatibility.</p>
<p>I used Open Office as a replacement for MS Office last year and had no problems.</p>
<p>Try it. It's free, and if you don't like it you can always switch back to MS Office.</p>
<p>I've been using nothing but OpenOffice for 2 years. It can handle .doc files like rtbenson mentioned and it can also handle excel sheets, power point, etc. I've send numerous papers (for online courses) directly to professors and have never had a compatibility problem. It even lets you save in .rtf (and numerous file formats I've never even seen used). Really great application and much less glitchy than MS Office.</p>
<p>I'll give it a go!</p>
<p>For those in the business school, you probably got an e-mail about sticking with Office 2003 because of a regression bug in Excel 2007 that will supposedly affect our coursework (I'm assuming OMS 301 and 311 and some of the BIT classes). So the computers (at least Ross) will be using Office 2003 for another year. Microsoft knows about it, and they're working on a patch, though, so you can still wait for that after upgrading.</p>
<p>Even after ignoring such software as the MS Office 2007 and Vista ultimate, the UM Showcase 6A package for the Dell XPS M1330 seems to be a decent deal. </p>
<p>I only wish you could customize certain aspects of the notebook such as video card, battery, among others. </p>
<p>But to get a 2.0 ghz, 2 GB ram, 120 gig Dell XPS M1330 WITH 3-year warranty (the warranty is big thing for me) is much more expensive when bought from the Dell Website.</p>