Preinstalled Office 2007 question

[endo]

I've recently bought a new laptop (HP) and it's ideal for what I need it for. It's come with Office 2007 preinstalled, the idea being you then buy one of the medialess licence kits off ebuyer or wherever. Problem is, the standard version (which is all I'd need really) is 150 notes, which I'm not paying because I know I can buy more complete versions of Office elsewhere for much less (plus, I'd like to actually have the disc in case I need to reinstall or whatever- apparently I can get a back-up copy from Microsoft if I buy the medialess licence, but it's a pain in the arse).

Anyhoo, my question is this. Does anyone know if I buy a normal retail version of Office, I can just use the licence key that comes with it and it'll unlock the preinstalled version of Office, or will I have to uninstall that and then install the retail copy?

[charlesr]

Don't know, but perhaps now's the time to jump to openoffice? Yeah, I know, I can't bring myself to do it either, but my sister has done it and she's a freelance writer so it can't be too bad.

[BaudAttitude]

Do you have, or can you borrow, an edu account?

http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx

Office Ultimate for 39 of your British funbucks, $60 here in the US. There's an additional fee if you want physical media mailed to you*.



* Or in my case, if you want to not receive the physical media, go back and forth with customer service about it for three months, and then have them close your case because it's been 90 days since you placed your order and somehow that makes it no longer their problem. So I don't recommend the option. Burn a backup DVD.

[endo]

Thanks for the replies.

I can do the cheapo studenty-based Office thing because my lil bro is at uni just now- 40 quid for the standard Office or 50-odd, I think, for the full Professional package (which I'd probably go for).

As for OpenOffice, it's not something I've ever used, but my gf started using it recently and I must say I was impressed. The only snag is that I have to use a couple of translation apps and they only run as Word clients (at least, only Word is officially supported). Could look into compatibility with OpenOffice (though I suspect one will only work with Word because the company that owns it does tonnes of work for Microsoft).

[Unwell Cat]

I've recently started using Open Office coming from Office 2007 and found it to be excellent. It's worked with every type of doc I've tried.