Ms Office

[CNEO]

I run a small accountancy practice and use excel, word and outlook and I'm doing an IT update.

Is MS Small business good enough?

Also any ideas on more economical solutions would be appreciated.

[johndon68]

Is MS Small business good enough?

If you mean MS Small Business Accounting, I believe that it has been withdrawn from the UK market.

John

[JoyDivision]

Open Office :)

[bovine]

i second open office. Google it, its a free download as far as im concerned does every ms office does. Supports office formats for opening and saving, no one will ever know!

[3cellhosting]

Open Office does pretty much everything that Micro$oft Office does, but it is FREE!!! :)

Even opens Micro$oft documents - with the exception of Publisher if I recall correctly.

Hope this helps

David

[Dawg]

One thing Open Office doesn't do (natively, there might be a plugin), is test the readability of text, and grade it by level. MS word does this and it can be quite useful when tweaking your web copy for usability, for instance getting to average 14year old reading level, (which is The Sun's level).

But apart from that...:)

[bartthomas]

Have you thought about Cloud Computing for MS Office and your Accounting software? It is ideal for Book-keepers and Accountants as you can work from client sites as though you were in the office. It's a great way to increase billable hours...

[johnnunn]

Microsoft Office is going to be updated to the next version in a few months. Office 2010 has some great new features which you may find incredibly useful. There is a free book (co1piltwb.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/mcoeredir/mcoeredirect.aspx?linkId=13096300&s1=797857c5-18be-ac69-92b3-0f7b2a76bc0d
which describes some of these new features.

Office Small buisness is a suite of office applications which covers most of your requirements (Word, Excell, Outlook, PowerPoint and Publisher), it does not include Access which you may find useful.

[shpalkin]

if you want that is not paid, you can use the free
such as Open Office
almost no difference with MS off from Microsoft

[BusinessIdeas]

The only downside in open office is compatability with ms access, it doesnt bring over macros. For everything else, open office is good.

[4little1s]

Just got a free evaluation copy of MS Office 2010 from the front of the PC Pro magazine. Its free to use until until October 10 it says on the instructions.

[alpha7158]

I support most things open source. Open office just doesn't compare to the Microsoft equivalent just yet. I have used both for the last 3 years. I would (and am) going to be using MS in my business.

[JDX_John]

i second open office. Google it, its a free download as far as im concerned does every ms office does. Supports office formats for opening and saving, no one will ever know!

Sorry but this isn't quite true. OO will save to a Word format, and open Word files. But any complex styling is likely to get screwed, and it can take ages getting it right.
How many hours do you have to lose before the cost of MSOffice seems cheap? Can you afford to send a .doc file to a customer (who you have to assume uses MSWord) and not know if it is mangled when they open it? "My accountant's terrible, they can't even write a Word Document" would be an expensive embarrassment.

However, the OO spreadsheet app is very good. But I remain unconvinced the Word processor is properly compatible with MSWord.