Microsoft is selling a demo of this year's Office product for $9.95 over their web site. This version is called Office XP. Has anyone tried it? I'm thinking about getting it mainly for Outlook, which accesses all mail accounts, including hotmail.

might be ok for outlook but from what i've read causes system crashes, when using the other apps ,word etc. if you do get it ,run msconfig and uncheck it from startup. it is a memory hog.

Hi, i am using FULL VERSION of OFFICE XP. The version i have is 10.2627.2625. Yes.. office XP is great !! esp. FrontPage 5.0.

Does anyone have a cd key or product key for Microsoft Office XP Professional? I bought a brand new notebook computer on an online auction - the reason it was a bargain was because it came with no cds or paperwork. Office is all loaded on there but I can't get to it without the key! Thank you in advance!

I have managed to get my hands on a 30-day demo of MS Office XP, and I wanted to let you guys know my thoughts on it before anybody went out and bought a copy. Price: The prices for the upgrade versions of XP have increased exponentially. Basically, we are looking at around $500 for a full version including Front Page, or around $300 for the basic packages that we all use. Installation: Installation was relatively easy. Microsoft forces you to delete any previous versions of Office in order to run this one, but it did install easily after that. Right Protection: This is probably going to be the biggest sore point we encounter. Registration is an utter pain in the you-know-what. Microsoft has instituted a triple protection scheme. They still use the 20-digit product code that you have to enter in during install, but they also now have an added protection scheme: You MUST register online, or over the telephone. If you do not do so, your software ceases to work after 50 times being used (that is TOTAL - Word 1ce and Excel 1ce counts as 2 uses) (the demo is 4 times) When you register, Microsoft compiles a huge number containing pieces of serial numbers from approximately 15 hardware components on your machine. You give them that number, and then they give you another number that they generate there. Finally, you are allowed to use your software on your computer. It will not work on any other computer because of the serial numbers. Not only that, but if you change more than 3 components on your computer, or if you format your hard drive (or get a new one) you have to go through the entire process again! This means, of course, that in order to use XP you have to purchase a copy for every single machine that you use it on, period. No alternatives. New Features: To be honest, I felt gypped here. Remember how at first glance Office '97 looked completely different from Office '95, but when you got into it Office '97 was the same darn thing with a face lift? I kind of felt that way about the new XP version. They have made another change to the way the menus look, and they have crowded more crap on the screens, such as new toolbars with no close button and a right side panel that does everything the toolbars and menus do, just in a different location. They have also made the programs even more intrusive (ahem - helpful) by having little smart buttons pop up under your cursor every time you do something, (like copy and paste) in case you didn't want to do what you just told the program to do. Don't get me wrong-- there are some nifty new features that I did enjoy. A few options got me to go hmm. Unfortunately, nothing impressed me enough to feel that this product is even remotely worth the money it is going to cost us to upgrade. I figure we have a year, maybe up to three before the industry forces us to upgrade. Until that time, I recommend that we stay with Office 2000 and simply pray that Microsoft will come to their senses, or at least come up with something better than this.