I bought a factory refurbished Dell D600 laptop. It has MS XP Pro 2002, service pack 2 installed, but no Word or Excel. Where can I get a cheap (or maybe even free) download? Although it would be nice to have one of the latest versions, I'd be happy with the basics for now. I found a bunch of sites offering it, but I'm not a guru at this & would appreciate input from someone who is :)

Word and Excel are not free. They are part of Microsoft Office Suite. You may be thinking of Microsoft Works ...

You might try OpenOffice at www.openoffice.org. It is free, and works pretty well. It is mostly compatible with Office.

Slonaker

You might try OpenOffice at www.openoffice.org. It is free, and works pretty well. It is mostly compatible with Office.

Slonaker

:agree: :agree: :agree:

OO is the suite I use on my home PC. Never had any trouble yet re: compatibility issues. Best of all IT'S FREE. 56k beware...

There are READERS available for free download from MS, however, you can only open docs with them. They do not allow doc creation or manipulation.

As a side note...Beware of downloading "bootleg" copies of MS from so-called "pirate" websites.

Not only is it illegal and unethical, most likely you will be reported to your ISP when you update your Windows software.

Downloading OO now- gonna give it a try ;)

Let us know what you think when you've had a chance to work it out. The interface looks ALOT like MS's. Hard to tell any difference.

So far, I like it. I use Excel for tons of stuff at work- I'll put this to the test next week & transfer my workstuff. Curious to see if it opens columns/ rows in the correct sizes along with colors, or If I will have to do some tweeking. And how it works vise- versa creating in OO & opening it at work with Excel.

Thanks guys for the heads up! :metal:

You can download Word Viewer and Excel Viewer from the Microsoft site also, if you justn eed to view files.

Otherwise, Star Office and Open Office are great choices.