Microsoft Offers Free Starter Edition for PC’s or Portable USB Key Installations
Microsoft Offers Free Starter Edition for PC’s or Portable USB Key Installations
Posted 11/27/2011 at 3:57pm
| by Justin Kerr
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Lots of great alternatives to Microsoft’s deluxe office suite have emerged over the past few years, but if you find yourself only occasionally in need of a tool to edit Word or Excel files, the hefty $159 price tag for the full home and student edition can be a bit hard to justify. Google Docs or even Microsoft’s own online versions of office can help in a pinch, but nothing quite matches the native experience you get from running the desktop app. If the above scenario describes you, click here to download a copy of Office 2010 Starter Edition for absolutely free.
Aside from its ability to run offline, Office 2010 Starter isn’t any better than the free web-based offering Microsoft launched earlier in the year.. It includes little more than a stripped down version of Word / Excel 2010, but operates almost the same as the full editions. It does however open all modern office document formats offline, and offers up just about every tool a non-enterprise user needs.
It isn’t known if this direct download link will stick around for long, so if you find yourself interested, I’d grab it ASAP. Apparently this version can also be installed to a USB key, making it an incredible portable option that can be moved from PC to PC. Just launch the Office Starter To-Go Device Manager from All Programs -> Microsoft Office Starter. The files take up about 400MB of space, but will give you all of the offline power of Word and Excel wherever you need it.
It would be great to see Microsoft keep this free version of Office around for users who might otherwise opt for the online editions, but only time will tell if that was the intent. Either way I’d jump on it now before they change their mind.
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mclancer
November 30, 2011 at 12:15am
"404 - File or directory not found."
Dam, found out too late. Sounds like I didn't miss much...
Neufeldt2002
November 27, 2011 at 9:14pm
Tried this, and it is ad supported, but the most annoying thing it did on my PC is add a partition labelled Q that was 0MB in size. After uninstalling it the Q partition is gone. I think I will stick with Libre Office as it is full featured and free, no ads.
Hondoe1950
November 27, 2011 at 8:46pm
I pretty adept with PCs, but I tried installing this and then repairing it on my 64bit Windows 7 PC and could not get it to run. No desktop icon, no obvious .EXE to run, nada.
Obviously, something is non-functional during the installation.
livebriand
November 27, 2011 at 9:20pm
The way it runs is completely obscure, probably to prevent copying of it and such. Look in the Start menu, Office 2010 Starter.
livebriand
November 27, 2011 at 7:16pm
Apprantly there's a offline way to do this: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/21441-Office-2010-Starter
ShyLinuxGuy
November 27, 2011 at 7:15pm
Kind of OT: I think it's so funny when colleges and universities say you need to have Microsoft Office for coursework. So far, I'm getting by with LibreOffice and no one knows the difference. Personally, I prefer LibreOffice/OpenOffice to Microsoft Office, versions 2007 and 2010.
warptek2010
November 27, 2011 at 6:16pm
Wow. Took em only 20 years or so. But stripped down versions??? How generous. LibreOffice is fully featured last time I looked and free!
livebriand
November 27, 2011 at 7:00pm
It doesn't work as well with MS Office documents though, and I prefer 2010's interface. I certainly think Office Starter for free is a good idea, better than nothing. It ought to stop quite a few people who would otherwise pirate, thus helping to reduce malware. I'm testing it out in a vm right now (currently paid for 2010 anyway). Maybe the thumb drive part will come in handy.
Edit: Worked perfectly! (In a Vista 64-bit VM) I'm going to try loading in onto a thumb drive now.
arch20002013
November 27, 2011 at 4:58pm
Il stick with OpenOffice myself. Never have had any problems with it. Opens all the files that I have encountered and works great for creating them. Best part, its full featured and FREE!!!
neo_mouse
November 28, 2011 at 6:17pm
you should switch over to http://www.libreoffice.org/ the whole dev team from openoffice left to start libre
dwood18
November 27, 2011 at 4:55pm
Could not get it to install in WIN XP said only for WIN Vista sp1
mhouston100
November 27, 2011 at 4:46pm
Does anyone have any furthur information on licensing with this? or the link to the Microsoft article on this? I can find no other information for Microsoft directly.
richeemxx
November 27, 2011 at 9:13pm
It is meant for OEMs only, and technically isn't supposed to be available for anyone else. I'm guessing someone stumbled on this link and posted it. There isn't much in terms of actual licensing other than that. Since it was supposed to me an OEM only type thing you don't need a key to install it.
MikeUter
November 27, 2011 at 4:43pm
Word of warning, it has a massive side bar with advertisements.
livebriand
November 27, 2011 at 7:01pm
Surely you can add something to your hosts file to remove them...
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