How does a family get a cheap licence.

[Coni]

I am frustrated. I am a housewife with 3 children and
work part-time from home. Each child has his own
computer, I have 2 , 1 business, 1 personal. The oldest
child will get his own laptop next year. Total computers:
6. As the other 2 get older add on another 2 laptops....

Each has to get his own OS, far enough, comes with the
computer. But now I find that for each computer I need to
buy a licence for OfficeXP separately, coming to over GBP
1.000 for all computers, wheras previously 1 licence
surficed.

What is the cheapest way to solve this problem? I do not
want to register as a business licence as the children
should have the student pack, I need standard.

Any solutions out there?

 

[Rob Schneider]

I am frustrated. I am a housewife with 3 children and
work part-time from home. Each child has his own
computer, I have 2 , 1 business, 1 personal. The oldest
child will get his own laptop next year. Total computers:
6. As the other 2 get older add on another 2 laptops....

Each has to get his own OS, far enough, comes with the
computer. But now I find that for each computer I need to
buy a licence for OfficeXP separately, coming to over GBP
1.000 for all computers, wheras previously 1 licence
surficed.

What is the cheapest way to solve this problem? I do not
want to register as a business licence as the children
should have the student pack, I need standard.

Any solutions out there?

Probably not any good solutions if cost the over-riding issue.

With Microsoft's product, you'll be buying individual licenses as you
surmise. I'm not aware that Microsoft has any family discount available
in their licensing offerings. Might want to explore if you kids can get
MS license via school or purchase an academic license ... not sure what
discount that brings.

You also have to factor in license costs for any software applications
you want to or need to purchase. Also not insignificant for a household
like you have.

In our household, we are increasingly using Linux on the propagating
machines. May not work for your, but keeps our household computing
costs down.

 

[Rob Schneider]

I guess another thing to consider (although it won't make you feel any
better) is that when you buy those laptops in future for the kids, it's
difficult to buy them without the the XP OS. (XP home is ubiquitous on
high-street offerings and XP Pro more easily available on laptops from
mail order companies like Dell). So even if you wanted to find
alternative licensing arrangements, it's going to be hard.

 

[DennisB]

As per usual Bill Gates has everyone by the short & curlies.

 

[Michael Stevens]

I am frustrated. I am a housewife with 3 children and
work part-time from home. Each child has his own
computer, I have 2 , 1 business, 1 personal. The oldest
child will get his own laptop next year. Total computers:
6. As the other 2 get older add on another 2 laptops....

Each has to get his own OS, far enough, comes with the
computer. But now I find that for each computer I need to
buy a licence for OfficeXP separately, coming to over GBP
1.000 for all computers, wheras previously 1 licence
surficed.

What is the cheapest way to solve this problem? I do not
want to register as a business licence as the children
should have the student pack, I need standard.

Any solutions out there?

Each and every one of your concerns can be addressed. All of the addressed
are eleigbled for the academic versions of the software. There is still a
substantial charge, and you have to make some decisions on how to deal with
the licensing.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

6 Student Licenses from www.simply.co.uk would cost £600.00. Contact them and you may get a discount.

Will;

 

[Jim Macklin]

To the OP...

You could download OPEN OFFICE which will work for school
work. It is similar in function to MS OFFICE and is
supposed to be able to open, read and create files that MS
OFFICE can also open. Don't know for sure, never used it
myself,

Like buying an automobile, the cost of the car is just the
beginning... insurance, taxes, repairs, gasoline (petrol),
parking, fines for speeding, computers have their own cost
structure.

You can find software and hardware used (you should get
CD/floppy and paperwork/manuals) from reputable sources. It
is also available from pirates and that may contain unknown
code and not work well.

Sorry about you being frustrated, but I am married and live
too far away to help with that problem.


| Coni wrote:
| > I am frustrated. I am a housewife with 3 children and
| > work part-time from home. Each child has his own
| > computer, I have 2 , 1 business, 1 personal. The oldest
| > child will get his own laptop next year. Total
computers:
| > 6. As the other 2 get older add on another 2
laptops....
| >
| > Each has to get his own OS, far enough, comes with the
| > computer. But now I find that for each computer I need
to
| > buy a licence for OfficeXP separately, coming to over
GBP
| > 1.000 for all computers, wheras previously 1 licence
| > surficed.
| >
| > What is the cheapest way to solve this problem? I do not
| > want to register as a business licence as the children
| > should have the student pack, I need standard.
| >
| > Any solutions out there?
|
| Each and every one of your concerns can be addressed. All
of the addressed
| are eleigbled for the academic versions of the software.
There is still a
| substantial charge, and you have to make some decisions on
how to deal with
| the licensing.
|
|

 

[Malke]

Hi

6 Student Licenses from www.simply.co.uk would cost £600.00. Contact
them and you may get a discount.

Will;

As Rob Schneider said, use Linux. You can have operating system,
browsers, graphics programs, other software, as well as an excellent
office suite (OpenOffice) for no cost. I always do pay for my Linux os
(SuSE) because I'm happy to support the SuSE team for turning out such
a good product, but you can download other Linux distributions for
nothing. I'm not slamming MS here because I think the MS operating
system has its uses, but the whole licensing thing is definitely
expensive.

Malke

 

[Phsyco]

And MS has the nerve to complain about hackers.

 

[Phsyco]

On the other hand, a poor "housewife" that can afford 6 pc's shouldn't
be complaining about the price of software..

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I am frustrated. I am a housewife with 3 children and
work part-time from home. Each child has his own
computer, I have 2 , 1 business, 1 personal. The oldest
child will get his own laptop next year. Total computers:
6. As the other 2 get older add on another 2 laptops....

Each has to get his own OS, far enough, comes with the
computer. But now I find that for each computer I need to
buy a licence for OfficeXP separately, coming to over GBP
1.000 for all computers, wheras previously 1 licence
surficed.

One license *never* sufficed. One license per machine was *always
the rule (except, with Office, a laptop and desktop could share a
license). The only thing that's new with Office XP is that
there's now an enforcement mechanism.

What is the cheapest way to solve this problem?

Use a different Office suite that's cheaper, such as Corel
Office, StarOffice, or even the freeware OpenOffice.

 

[Al Dykes]

I am frustrated. I am a housewife with 3 children and
work part-time from home. Each child has his own
computer, I have 2 , 1 business, 1 personal. The oldest
child will get his own laptop next year. Total computers:
6. As the other 2 get older add on another 2 laptops....

Each has to get his own OS, far enough, comes with the
computer. But now I find that for each computer I need to
buy a licence for OfficeXP separately, coming to over GBP
1.000 for all computers, wheras previously 1 licence
surficed.

What is the cheapest way to solve this problem? I do not
want to register as a business licence as the children
should have the student pack, I need standard.

Any solutions out there?

Look at openoffice (www.openoffice.org) legal, free, and very very good.
It's a complete suite and reads and writes MS-format documents.

Wordperfect is a fine office suite and costs a fraction of what MS charges.
(www.corel.com)

MS has no-cost "viewer" applications that browse and print each of the
MS Office file tupes. These are nice for machines are never used to
write a document but may get a document as an email attachment. They
also are fundamentally immune from catching a virus. (I just looked
on the MS download dite and can't find these. Can someone provide a
URL. )

 

[Donald McDaniel]

Look at openoffice (www.openoffice.org) legal, free, and very very
good. It's a complete suite and reads and writes MS-format documents.

OpenOffice is ALMOST complete. A few years ago, they made the decision to
not provide a PIM or e-mail program with their suite. This was a bad
decision, in my opinion. Other than that, OpenOffice is a pretty good
office suite. The price is certainly right.