[LMB] AKICOTL: Computer Question

[James]

On Jan 26, 2008 5:21 PM, Katrina Knight <kknight at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Are you sure you actually bought a copy of MS Word? Gateway
> computers generally come with a trial version of MS Office.
> Office will run for 30 days (or maybe 60 days)  and you need to
> actually buy the program and enter the code to make the
> applications run properly after that. If you bought a copy with
> the computer, you should have the license sticker with the key
> on it somewhere. Do you see your Windows license sticker on the
> computer? The MS Office license/key should look similar but
> might be a bit larger.  It is also possible to buy MS Word as
> part of the MS Works Suite. I think, but I'm not sure, that the
> license/key looks similar for that as well.

This is actually a very good point - a lot of PCs come loaded with
tons of crap on them - lots of trialware and demo software. Microsoft
Office 2007 is one of them - you can download a trial copy from
Microsoft that works for 30 days, after which, you must buy it. (The
hook is, that by default Office saves in the new Office file format,
which doesn't open well in previous versions - at least, using the
converters Microsoft provides. General experience has it that
converting files never show up as good as the original program).

Its likely your Office 2007 was a trial version - your computer never
came with it (if it did, you would have it with your documentation
pack - the card that says "Microsoft Windows" will have a similar card
for Office with the hologram and everything). If not, well, you were
"trying out" Office.

It's very annoying getting a new computer loaded with all the crapware
slowing it down. Brand new, it's neat, but then a month down the road
when everything expires, poof. You can't use that shiny DVD burner
anymore except in a basic mode, you can't record videos or edit home
movies or whatever else they threw on and you accidentally set "Try
full version" only to realize when it expires, everything you need you
can't do anymore, and you have to ante up another $1000 to pay for it
all.

My Sony UMPC came loaded to the gills - irs 40GB hard disk - on first
boot, only 10GB was free!