Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1799 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows XP Professional
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.10 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
After the most painless installation yet from a Microsoft product, Office XP Standard immediately starts to make an impression. The code has obviously been tightened with programs starting and closing noticeably faster. As well as several key changes from Office 2000 to improve productivity and collaboration, many smaller welcome tweaks have been introduced to improve functionality across the board.

The focus in this release is on making Office smarter, providing better collaboration tools and self-customising to individual users (with a bit of help). The "Smart Tags" are a clever way of automatically matching data in documents to tasks such as inserting an address when you're writing a letter in Word or copying and pasting data in Excel. This is extremely welcome as is the ability to customise auto-correct (don't correct these types of errors but do correct these). Also new are "Task panes". Imagine a cross between a Wizard and the Help section that, by means of some drop-down menus makes relevant commands easily available, thus achieving results faster.

As well as the cross-product improvements, each suite has had an overhaul. Outlook has seen many tweaks that improve usability and productivity notably auto-correct during typing and improved ease of setting up mail accounts plus support for Hotmail. PowerPoint contains a plethora of enjoyable new effects that can be combined in multiple ways leading to the swishiest presentations and some useful new applications most notably the organisation chart creator. Word and Excel benefit the most from "Smart Tags" and "Task Panes". Some new useful features include a merge function in Word for incorporating other users' changes, a "Word Count" display for those late-night essays, a drop-down menu in Excel with commonly used functions and an extremely easy-to-use set of diagram creators.

Office XP will improve productivity and results across the entire application suite. The improved functionality especially with "Smart Tags" and "Task Panes" once learnt will save users considerable time in creating quality documents. --Colin Neal

*Important Note: Microsoft Office XP Standard for Students and Teachers is for qualifying students, parents/guardians or teachers only.
Student: must be enrolled on a full-time or part-time basis in a school, college or university, which is recognised by the applicable government agency.
Parent/Guardian: have children in the above category and wish to purchase on their behalf for their educational use.
Teacher: employed full-time or part-time to teach within any such school, college or university as above.

Manufacturer's Description
Microsoft created this unique suite to give students and teachers in K-12 and higher-education institutions an opportunity to get Office software at a discounted price. The suite includes full versions of Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2002

. Work Independently
You can get more done working on your own--and in less time--with Office XP. Innovations such as task panes and smart tags put relevant features and options at your fingertips--so you don't have to search for hard-to-find menu items.

Work Effectively with Teachers and Peers
Office XP enables you to work more effectively with teachers, classmates, and others by offering an improved document editing and review process--and by bringing communication tools like MSN Messenger Service and MSN Hotmail together with your calendar and contact information.

Extend Your Learning Experience
Use Office XP as a learning hub to access information from multiple locations across a school or university network and the Web. You can link to relevant resources when you need them and easily find information with advanced search.

Customer Reviews

Good, but nowhere near as good as Office 2000 for Students
I bought Office XP for a friend to install on their machine. Whilst I was installing I took the time to have a look over the package and was disappointed.

When I bought Office 2000 for Students and Teachers, it was the Premium version - I received a 4-cd pack with Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, Access, Publisher, Frontpage, Photodraw and the Small Business Tools for £130.

The Office 2000 package was a real bargain, and I still use it and will continue to do so. In one huge package I ended up with all the office software I will ever need. I don't like Office XP, because I think it's missing too much to be good. Don't get me wrong, Word, Excel and Outlook are all good packages - but with Sun's StarOffice available for £40 and with OpenOffice.org available online for free, why should you fork out a fair whack of student money for half an office suite?

Excellent, but check before you upgrade!
There is no doubt that Office XP is a great product, and very useful. I could not do without it. MS Works just doesn't compare. Microsoft Excel and Word are wonderfully flexible. MS Excel can be used for financial and scientific work, and as a database as well. MS Word can be used for Business and Creative Writing, and for Desk Top Publishing and Web Design. (Obviously if you want a professional database, or want to do professional web design and DTP, you should consider using more specialist packages.) Microsoft Outlook, another part of Office XP, is a very flexible and user-friendly email package. However in this review I am focusing on Word and Excel, since they are the main value-added in MS Office.

If you have bought a PC/Laptop with just MS Works pre-installed, then you should seriously consider buying MS Office if you want to get the most out of your computer.

There is the question of whether Office XP will feel like a real upgrade to users of Office 95 to Office 2000. For the average user, Excel may not seem massively changed. And if all you are doing in Word is basic Creative and Report writing, then you may not feel there are big changes in the new version of Word. However the Web Design functionality is much improved over Office 95 in MS Word. So if you don't have Front Page you may find MS Word XP useful.

Overall, MS Office is an excellent package. If you have Office 95 it may be worth your while getting MS Office XP. If you are an average user and have Office 2000, you should look carefully at the functions you need for Word Processing and consider whether moving to Office XP is really worth it.

Missing Access
I like most Microsoft Office products (despite their faults!). I have always recommended that staff and students buy them. But no longer. This package reduces the options available to the straightforward presentation and communications software. Where, oh where is Access? This may be a difficult package to use but it is crucial for students to be able to learn it.

So if you are a student I would go for Star Office until Microsoft gets its act together and offers the Professional version to students and teachers - something it always has done in the past.