This is probably going to sound like spam, but Microsoft is currently offering Office 2007 Ultimate to students for just under £40 (retails at £600-ish).

All you need is a .ac.uk address (the offer also applies in the US and Canada, don't know what the conditions are there). To me, paying £40 sure beats the hassle of acquiring it through 'other means'.

http://theultimatesteal.co.uk/product.asp

You must hold a valid email address at a U.K. educational institution ending in .ac.uk (for example, [email protected]) AND be actively enrolled with at least 0.5 course load. Also, you must be able to provide proof of enrollment status (ie, student card) upon request by Microsoft. If you are unable to provide proof of enrollment, you will be required to pay the full retail price of Office Ultimate 2007 (£599.99).
What's Included (502Mb)

Access™ 2007
Excel® 2007
Groove® 2007
InfoPath® 2007
OneNote® 2007
Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager*
PowerPoint® 2007
Publisher 2007
Word 2007

*Business Contact Manager is a separate download

Considering only Word and Excel are useful, and the Office '07 ribbon UI is a natural disaster.. I can't see what's to jump up n down with joy about

I thought by now, most people (who wanted a copy) would have a copy of office '03 (by whatever means). I won't be "upgrading" my '03 version until it becomes entirely obsolete as the UI actually makes sense and is accessible.



Regards,

Ian

I actually quite like the 2007 UI, and I have to use it every day for work.

Powerpoint is also eminently (unfortunately) useful as a college student.



edit: the university I work for provides Office 2007 for free to all students and staff, though.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I actually quite like the 2007 UI, and I have to use it every day for work.

Damn.. I looked at it for a brief few mins (both for usability and for coding my own ribbon) and decided it held nothing useful from either perspective. Long live menus and toolbars where logic is apparent.

Quote :

Powerpoint is also eminently (unfortunately) useful as a college student.

Hmm, I guess it may depend on subjects taken? It bugs the hell out of me when I get a flow chart of a site map by a design agency done in powerpoint.. they could have used any other app to display one page of ovals and diamond shapes and text.. but alas................... Never used it back in college days either.. back then it was Word 2.0 and Aldus PageMaker



Regards,

Ian

Hassle? There's very little hassle involved in "getting things by alternative means"
My single .exe auto-installer of 2003 is just a double-click and i can do the whole "being productive"-thing within minutes.

Quote from Ian.H :

Damn.. I looked at it for a brief few mins (both for usability and for coding my own ribbon) and decided it held nothing useful from either perspective. Long live menus and toolbars where logic is apparent.

Yeah, I really disliked it when I first saw it as well, but after using it for a few weeks I've found that there's a lot less clicking through required to get at the more esoteric settings and options, and the more commonly used options are readily available at all times. I dig it. Makes good sense to me.

Quote :

Hmm, I guess it may depend on subjects taken? It bugs the hell out of me when I get a flow chart of a site map by a design agency done in powerpoint.. they could have used any other app to display one page of ovals and diamond shapes and text.. but alas................... Never used it back in college days either.. back then it was Word 2.0 and Aldus PageMaker

I agree that it's a terrible program and that it produces mediocre-looking results at best, but it's unfortunately become the industry standard. We're starting to get college professors who used it as students, so it's all they know and they assign PowerPoint assignments to their students. Pretty lame.

Quote :

Hassle? There's very little hassle involved in "getting things by alternative means"

For one, there's the time required for downloading a 500Mb torrent, which varies hugely depending on torrent health and which ports your ISP feels like restricting today. Also, you have to choose the right one or there's always a chance it may not finish/you may never get over 30Kb down and it'll take weeks. £40 for the convenience and not having to worry when a patch comes out suits me.

Quote from Ian.H :

Never used it back in college days either.. back then it was Word 2.0 and Aldus PageMaker

Thanks, you've just made me feel even older than i already am I used Word 2.0 and some kind of desktop publishing thing (can't remember it's name) In my first proper job. And it was old hat even then ! (a lumberjack company didn't really need state of the art computer software :tilt

£40's not a bad offer at all, but we're dealing with students here. Why not go download Open Office, save yourself 40 quid, and go out on the lash

Because I use OpenOffice and there's still a lot of things it can't do. It's not a perfect alternative yet. £40 out of a £2500 student loan ain't much for top-end software.

Quote from TiJay :

£2500 student loan

I'm way out of touch with the whole student thing, but £2500 !! is that all you get ?? and thats a loan too ! don't they give grants anymore ?

If thats the case i'm really glad i'm an old fart

They give grants in exceptional circumstances. But these days the norm is a £2500 per year loan. They give £4k to people living away but that barely covers rent.

Wow thats shocking, you'd get more than that on the dole.

Can't quite remember the exact numbers so this is a bit of a guess but i think i got a grant in the region of £1700 and that was in the mid-late 80's, didn't have to pay it back either, and i still managed to run up a hefty overdraft !

Dunno how todays students manage. (bet the beer's still cheap though )

With that in mind, that £40 offer seems a bit tight arsed to me, you guys should get it free.

How is this for a swindle?
A 'student' I know has:

A *VALID* *.ac.uk e-mail address
They are in FULL TIME education.
They have valid PROOF that they are a full time student..


So why da f*** cant they have this package??

M$ only gives to those that don't need it!

(In any case, they got it installed already...teh 'blue' version )


As for what version I used in college...

COMPUTERS WEREN'T EVEN INVENTED THEN!!!!!!

Quote from Ian.H :

Considering only Word and Excel are useful, and the Office '07 ribbon UI is a natural disaster.. I can't see what's to jump up n down with joy about

I thought by now, most people (who wanted a copy) would have a copy of office '03 (by whatever means). I won't be "upgrading" my '03 version until it becomes entirely obsolete as the UI actually makes sense and is accessible.



Regards,

Ian

In your OPINION it's rubbish. For me it's a step in the right direction...

I want a copy, but i can't afford a legal copy, and currently i'm on a Trial version. If only i got a bloody .ac.uk adress for doing 6th Form, if i did College it'd get one

Quote :

How is this for a swindle?
A 'student' I know has:

A *VALID* *.ac.uk e-mail address
They are in FULL TIME education.
They have valid PROOF that they are a full time student..


So why da f*** cant they have this package??

Sorry, I don't follow. Why can't they have the package?

Quote :

Wow thats shocking, you'd get more than that on the dole.

What sucks in in Scotland and Wales they still have grants instead of loans AFAIK. And the govt. wonders why higher education numbers are dropping in England.

What's really odd is the old Newcastle Polytechnic became a fully fledged University a while back. Over the last few years they've been buying up what seems like most of the city centre and building all sorts of weird and wonderful buildings, even a bridge over the motorway, and those things don't come cheap. It must be costing them millions, so where the hell are they getting all the money ??

The old original Redbrick Newcastle University has done nothing, they seem to be skint !

@Bladerunner, judging by your avatar i think you're a bit older than me . But i remember being taught how to use a slide rule at school because calculators hadn't been invented yet ! (but then again that may have just been the cheapsake school i went to)

@Tijay, simple answer, move to Scotland

I have MS Office available to me through some employment thing they have going on. If I'm licensed at work (which I am) and my employer is in the program (which they are), I have a free license. It just costs shipping ($20 US, IIRC) for the CD to ship to me.

As for college. What was before Windows 3.1? I don't remember a Windows before 3.1. We did very little on a PC. We had mainly a Mac lab for use to type up our chemistry reports. No one had their own computers. Consumers started purchasing their own pretty much right after college. My daughter is in 1st grade this year. Her room has computers everywhere, as well as an individual computer lab down the hall. She has more computers just in her classroom than we had available in the entire school when I was in college.

I can remember needing to type up a chem report for class in 3 hours, going to the computer lab and "sh@t, there's already 4 people in there..." and running home to type it up on the typewriter. Home wasn't far from the community college I went too. A really small college, yet one of the only 3 in the country that had the Metrology program (no, that's not about the weather, LOL. Got that all the time...)

Quote from Ian.H :

I thought by now, most people (who wanted a copy) would have a copy of office '03 (by whatever means). I won't be "upgrading" my '03 version until it becomes entirely obsolete as the UI actually makes sense and is accessible.

I'm using Office 97 and it does the job for me, TBH I prefer it to OpenOffice and the later Windows versions of MS Office, the Mac version of MS Office has the best UI IMO. Really I don't regard compatibility as an issue, I've never had any backwards compatibility problems in Word, Excel or Powerpoint (except some effects don't show up).

Quote from Mazz4200 :

..........

@Bladerunner, judging by your avatar i think you're a bit older than me . But i remember being taught how to use a slide rule at school because calculators hadn't been invented yet ! (but then again that may have just been the cheapsake school i went to)

........

I had a calculator at school...it had lots of rows of wires with wooden balls on them!
Scared the life out of EmmyLou (my daughter!) by hiding her calculator during a maths homework session, and then teaching her how to use a slide rule...(still got mine, it must be 40 years old!)

When she took it to school to show the maths class...even the TEACHER didnt know how to use it!!
Emmy taught the teacher, and got millions of smartie points!

OT: I've just misread the thread title for the second time and clikced it again -> The ultimate seal :o