School is almost back in full swing. Last minute shoppers of school supplies and school clothes are bustling through places like Wal Mart and Target with almost the ferver of Christmas shoppers on Christmas Eve.

In addition to the traditional school supplies a computer is needed. On that computer is required a word processing program, spread sheet program, presentation program, and internet access.

Some schools just say that Microsoft Office is what their students need to successfully complete homework assignments. The complete unrestricted version of Microsoft Office will cost just over $300.00. However, the Student Edition of Microsoft Office will cost only $123.00.

Microsoft markets 8 different variations of its’ Office. We are only concern ourselves with 5 of them. We got our comparisons from Tech Republic article that was written shortly after the release of Office 2007.

• Microsoft Office Basic 2007: This edition is not available for retail purchase and thus you can’t upgrade to it from earlier versions of Office. You can only get it through OEMs, preinstalled on new computers. It contains only the basic applications: Word, Excel, and Outlook.
• Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007: This replaces the old Student and Teacher edition, which was one of the options for Office 2003. Now it’s available to home users as well as those in the academic world. Pricing is comparable, at $149, but there is no upgrade path from Office 2003. This edition includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Note.
• Microsoft Office Small Business 2007: This edition includes programs that are especially useful to small businesses. It costs $449 for the full version and $279 for the upgrade version. You can upgrade from the same products listed above under Office Standard 2007. This edition includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Office Accounting Express, and Publisher.
• Microsoft Office Professional 2007: This edition is aimed at business users with more sophisticated needs, particularly database creation and access. It costs $499 for the full version and $329 for the upgrade version. You can upgrade from the same products listed above under Office Standard 2007. This edition includes everything you get in Small Business edition (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Accounting Express, and Publisher) plus Microsoft Access.

For most student up through high school the Microsoft Office Home & Student is all that is really needed. Small Business and Professional will be needed for accounting, or tracking groups of people.

I would be amiss if I did not offer you an alliterative. Open Office has been around for years. It comes with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and data base programs. It is a free download. Files can be saved to any Microsoft format.  There are some more advance features that are not in Open Office that Microsoft has.

Bottom-line: Some teacher tell their students that Open Office will not save documents for Microsoft formats, and is not used out in the business world. Both of these statements are wrong.

I do recommend to home and small businesses alike if there is some special reason for using Microsoft Office do so. Otherwise try Open Office you may find that it does work for you at a very fraction of the cost.