http://www.amazon.com/Asus-1001P-MU17-B ... 41966&s=pc

I need Word, Powerpoint and Excel. But Windows 7 starter doesn't come with MS Office. What are my alternitives?
Is there 3rd party software I can use to view and edit Office Documents with out any issues?
Or will my best bet be buying Office Home & Student?

RCA wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Asus-1001P-MU17-B ... 41966&s=pc

I need Word, Powerpoint and Excel. But Windows 7 starter doesn't come with MS Office. What are my alternitives?
If there 3rd party software I can use to view and edit Office Documents with out any issues?
Or will my best bet be buying Office Home & Student?

OpenOffice is a strong possibility - it is also free and a very full package of tools. However, it is not 100% compatible with Microsoft Office ... for most people, this is not an issue and you can read and write Microsoft Office files pretty easily.

But, if you use very complex functions in Excel or some of the automated capability in Word (like Smart Art), then the incompatibilities are a more serious limitation. How much this matters for you will be something you need to check out for yourself. You can download it from http://www.openoffice.org for the Windows version.

Z

Awesome!
Why I haven’t heard of openoffice before this thread is beyond me.

I ended up getting the Asus Eee PC 1001P with Case Logic PLS-9 Ultraportable Netbook Sleeve for about $300 shipped.

Nice choice. I've got an Asus 1005. I originally got it with the 3 cell battery, but since have upgraded to the 6 (what is in the one your purchased). I also upgraded to 2 gigs of ram and threw in a SSD to replace the 5400 rpm drive that came standard. Now, my bottleneck is definitely the processor, but it performs well for such a small device. I'm sure you'll be pleased with your purchase.

I'm running Ubuntu on mine, so Open Office is really my only option. The only thing you'll have issues with is macros and such in excel. Other than that it is almost entirely compatible with MS Office. Just make sure you choose to save files as the right type and they will be fine when you go to open them on a Windows PC with MS Office.

What are the real world battery life on those things?
I plan on taking it to school for my longs days (9:30am - 8pm) and not be stingy with using it because of battery life.

Also I plan on removing one of my two 2GB ram sticks from my current machine to the Netbook and take the 1GB stick from the netbook and put it where the 2GB stick used to go. What negative affects on Batt life should I expect by making this move?

I think my netbook battery is rated for 10 hours. I think I can get aroun 8 hours out of it under heavy use. Not sure if you'll make it a whole 12 hours if you're using it constantly, but if there is some down time while to walk from class to class you just might be ok.

I don't think there is much of an issue with ram reducing battery life. But make sure your ram is compatible. I'm assuming you're pulling a stick from your laptop to put in the netbook? I don't remember what it is capped at, but I think it might be capped at 667 mhz. To be honest, I don't know that there is a huge performance gain with the ram upgrade, but I'm also using Ubuntu which is a bit lighter on memory than Win 7. Like I said, it might also be tough for me to tell since my cpu is definitely the bottleneck now.