Forum Moderators: open
Also if I was to buy a copy I was under the impression that the user had to register it online with office XP. Is this true or is my mate talking horse.
Cheers
Once it detects a valid upgradable product is installed on your machine it lets you install, once the install is done it asks if you want to activate the product or skip it for now.
You can choose to keep on skipping for up to 60 days (from install date?), after this it ceases to work unless you you activate it.
Activation can be can be completed one of two ways (there may be more ways but there were the obvious ones - precise details about activation were very scarse in the documentation);
Over the internet - you key in the various codes etc and press go, a few seconds later it says thanks and you are done.
Over the phone - you key in the codes over the phone, it takes an age and then finally it tells you what you need to enter on your machine to activate.
Personally I tried the phone approach but it was irritating enough to really deter me so I just did the internet registration.
I did try skipping for a while but it's kind of like using shareware which comes with a nag screen - every time you start an office product it "reminds" you to activate before eventually letting you skip.
IMO the price of Office XP compared to the features it offers isn't really worth it - especially when you could pick up an office 2000 profession or above for peanuts which has pretty much all the basic features of office XP with the added bonus of no activation!
- Tony
So it sounds like plan 2: get 3 academic copies wont work either as I have to register the mutha.
Any pointers as to where I could get 3 legit copies of 2000 in the UK?
Cheers
www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sol_and_products/actionpack/default.asp
Which for £199+VAT gets you a whole heap of stuff designed for development & testing, but which gets you 10 licences + install media for Office XP professional among other things (other things being all their OS's and most of their servers - Exchange, ISA etc.).
The only real gotcha appeared to be that you are licencing for a year - whether or not the products expire after that I couldn't say, although I would be very surprised if they did. As long as you don't require auditable licences after this time it shouldn't be a problem.
Even if they expire, its been this price for a few years and they said they have no plans to hike the price up in the immediate future so...
- tony
[edited by: Dreamquick at 1:44 pm (utc) on Jan. 16, 2003]
I know what you go through though - I've got 4 boxes here and shelling out for a copy of MS-XYZ for all 4 is a joke.
Ebay and less than a tenner should suffice.
Ebay here I come.
Dreamquick. Unfortunately it has to be auditable, it is for a solicitors office :) law abiding and all that.
Yes Office97 is a valid product for an upgrade. I just upgraded with no problems.
