After my initial review of Office 2007 was published last week a reader wrote to say how overwhelmed she feels about having to constantly update software... expensive software. She uses Microsoft Office 2000 a lot as she publishes a quarterly newsletter using Excel and Publisher.“I’m retired now and I can ill afford to spend so much money on an upgrade,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Now with this new technology Microsoft has introduced, how will I be able to function with my little Office 2000 version?... How will we be able to cope with this new software technology at these prices?”

I feel for you and others in your position, but you do not have to worry about upgrading. Yes the software is expensive, costing sometimes as much as a basic desktop computer these days. For example Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 costs $449 for a full install and $279 for an upgrade. This is the cheapest suite that includes Excel and Publisher.

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, the most complete package, costs $679 for the full install and $539 for the upgrade.

For the reader, I advise her to stick with her Office 2000 version, as it is perfectly fine for what she is doing. If she needs to exchange documents with Office 2007 users, she can download a “compatibility” pack.

By installing the compatibility pack for Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. You need to go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads and click on the “Office System” link under “Recommended Downloads”.

In my case I use Office 2003 and now, of course, 2007 at home. My work place uses Office 2000 and there is no need to update, at least for those of us who only really need Word, FrontPage and Outlook.

The excellent review of Office 2007 by CNet advises people to really think about whether they need to upgrade or not.

“If you primarily work with plain text and don’t need to pretty up reports and newsletters and the like, then it might not be right for you,” the Cnet reviewers stated. “For our purposes as editors, for instance, Word 2007 doesn’t introduce must-have goodies, although commenting commands are within easier reach... Above all, Microsoft’s new word processor is most upgrade-worthy if you want to play with pictures, charts, and diagrams in addition to text.”

Kind of contradictory isn’t it? However, the bottom line is do not buy if you do not need. Use the compatibility pack and spend your savings on something more pleasurable.

For those of you who do not have any version of Office, or one of its components such as Word or Excel, there is another solution. You can always try out the free OpenOffice.org suite, which contains most of the functions you will find in the Office suite.

The one missing piece is Publisher, which you do not need to create newsletters or other documents.

Publisher’s major advantage is its templates, which allow you to easily slot in your text and graphics using the provided layout.

You can do the same in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org’s Writer using text boxes and the columns features. It only takes an hour or so to set up the parameters of your template, which you can use again for similar projects. OpenOffice is available at www.OpenOffice.org.

There are also other online word processors that let you save your work to the web, but I have not tested these and they are of course not practical for business use. But if you feel inclined you can check out Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Zoho Writer, ThinkFree, and Glide Write.

In my case I will stick with Microsoft Office because I am thoroughly familiar with the suite. I do like the new tabbed interface and some of the new functions, but there is a learning curve to climb, and I am still labouring to figure out some of the commands.

However this difficulty is because I have not really put it through its paces yet.

If you have any comments contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmed<$>[AT]gmail.com.