Review by cyharriscat

Do you need a basic but .docx/.xlsx/.pptx capable version of real Microsoft Office? OpenOffice not doing a good enough job for what you need? Are you put off by Office 2013, which doesn’t offer three product keys for your trouble? Are you even more put off with Microsoft turning Office into Software as a Service with Office 365?nnWell, you’re going to have to accept some compromises, namely the hated Ribbon and not having all the Office apps. But there are Z number of people who have late Windows XP/early Windows Vista era PCs that are perfect for secondary production running Windows 7 from a retail upgrade disk-and when you do the clean install upgrade for Windows, which you will eventually have to do due to Windows rot, you are going to need Office and you may never get up the budget to where you want to invest in Office 2010 or later for such a low-end often barely Aero-capable PC, so this is perfect as long as you temper your expectations.

With properly set expectations and a legal copy of Office 2007 Home and Student, you can now get down to how it works.

It works by running basic Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote tasks It’s not going to wow you like a new version of Office, but a common thread I’ve read in hundreds of reviews for various versions and editions of Office is why do they break what works in the previous version when they release a new version? Well, by buying an older version, there are no surprises as regards what Office can and can’t do, because it’s been around for however many years it’s been since the date the version in question (Office 2007 Home and Student, which is 7 years as of when I write this) was made.

What can it actually do? Well, Word’s fully featured (as long as you’re using it for home or student use.) Excel is fully featured as regards the base program (again, the same caveat applies.) PowerPoint will get your presentations done, although you’ll miss some of the customizations of later versions. OneNote is fully featured, and it along with PowerPoint have the caveat that they’re for home or student use. The only thing that really lacks in Home and Student versus let’s say Ultimate (which I use for troubleshooting through over-engineering), is the Microsoft Office Tools-you can’t expect fancy things like Business Contact Manager and the accompanying copy of SQL Server 2005 Express.

In case you’re wondering, I’m reviewing this for my aunt and uncle, who sat there and bought a PC in May of 2009 and thanks to a certain ability I have to troubleshoot combined with them buying retail Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade through the Best Buy fulfillment of the Windows 7 Upgrade Option that was current at the time along with retail Office 2007 Home and Student that they beat out of HP’s customer (dis)service-albeit with having to pay for it, I get to (and thoroughly enjoy) troubleshooting their PC whenever it is having an issue because I’m on a mission to keep them off of the crack Windows that is Windows 8/RT/8.1/RT 8.1/Windows Phone 8X/Windows Phone 8.1x and I thoroughly enjoy every time I can fix their PC that uses this software.

Office 2007 Home and Student was a change for them at first from the WordPerfect Office suite they were using on their old XP computer, a Dell Dimension 2400 (They replaced it with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750+ 4GB RAM 500GB HD HP Pavilion Slimline S5120Y. But then again so was Vista and then 7-they didn’t have too much trouble with Vista, but Windows 7 Home Premium combined with this version of Office makes them able to do everything they would ever want to do with Office and a PC. When that changes, they will upgrade-and so far it’s not changing.

I just think that Office 2007 (whether lowly Home and Student or mighty Ultimate or something in between like Professional) didn’t deserve the reputation it got as regards the Ribbon. People were (and some still are) so angry about the Ribbon that they don’t like Office because of the Ribbon. I know I am not as qualified as some people to speak due to my aversion to command line interfaces, whether of the old school DOS/Unix variety or whether of the newfangled Windows PowerShell variety, but I know this for a fact:nnOnce I properly configured their PC with Windows 7 Home Premium Retail Upgrade on a clean install and reimported their programs, files, and settings, they were using it productively as could be until a virus hit that forced them to pay someone way too much to repair their computer. I was able to set it right and from the moment I first showed them how to do basic things like bold, underline, italics, margins, indentation, in other words showed them where Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student put the tools they were using in WordPerfect Office, they’ve been happily using Office with the Ribbon.

I hate to discount those who have had negative experiences with Office 2007, because I don’t like most change-especially not the licensing restrictions growing ever tighter since 2000, but I haven’t had any problems with the Ribbon either.

So with the Ribbon discounted for us and our family, we can now move on to infinitely more pressing matters. Which is how does Office (specifically 2007 Home and Student) perform in real world tasks? Well, it doesn’t make you have to renew the usage rights to it every year, it supports the .docx/.xlsx/.pptx trio, and it has a user interface that aside from being different is actually usable (if you can figure out what each button on each section of the ribbon is for, which ToolTips really help with that and they’re on by default).

In summation, for the reasons outlined above, Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student is worth the money if you can get a legal copy. I recommend it as long as it’s needs match up well with what you need out of (specifically Microsoft) Office,nnTake this as you will, 2 families’ experiences with Office 2007, one Ultimate, one Home and Student, which is positive and we continue to use Office 2007 to this day.