Just my observations.....I am retired and use MS Office for my personal use only after many years in the business world. I have been using the 2003 version for many years and have been very happy with it. I could do any and everything I wanted to without any thought. I had to purchase a new computer that came with Windows 7 and find that the 2003 version of MS Office is not compatible and I am FORCED to upgrade to 2010. It is definitely different and has a learning curve to it. Now I have to spend a lot of time finding how to do what I used to do with no thought. I wish I didn't HAVE to but the "powers that be" (Microsoft) do not allow you to have a choice, they force you to change whether you want to or not, whether you NEED to or not. Point being, whether you want to or not, eventually you are going to HAVE to upgrade. Your only decision is: now or later. Good luck!

Vala, I was in the same mindset as you, it would cost about $300 to replace the bad parts then extra for them to reload everything onto the new HD, but I would still be stuck with an older computer and OS, which means the parts are also getting older and can go out at any time. Instead of chancing having to fix it over and over, I chose a new one with Windows 7 (64bit) and MS Office 2010 for just a couple hundred more. Also, now I have a warranty again in case it does go downhill. Sorry about that Raven, I will try again. BTW, everytime I see your name I crave crawfish etoufee!!! Here is a link that might be useful: New computer

Thanks for the thoughts, I think it is not resource overload, and I'm using only the XP home firewall, pretty transparent I understand. I'm running on a recent Gateway Notebook, in this case and on a recent Dell Desk Top in the other, the DT has no problems. I will admit my Gateway does have some difficulties on Com1 (simulated via USB, of course). I'm still using dial-up and it uses Com1, as does my Palm Z22 sync connection. I can not run both at the same time for that reason. Further, and Gateway did send me a prepaid shipping carton to send the Notebook back for repair as the dial-up will establish only one connection per boot. When I hang up the phone line, I have to reboot to get it to work again. I'm about to go DSL here and decided not to send the Notebook in, loss of data and a lot of other concerns being top of my reason for living with the Com1/Dial-up problem. I suppose this could reflect back into my new MS Office problem The installation of MS Office was a purchase DVD. The Notebook did come with Office 2007 ready to install, but I uninstalled that some time back as I was using Open Office, need commercial use. So, Gateway believes the machine has enough resources to run Office 2007. I can take a look to see what's going on with the resources when in the stuck-state. As noted, Control/Alt/Del will not allow me to kill Word, for example, also I note Work knows it is in trouble and tries to send an error report to MS, I think it sometimes succeeds sometimes doesn't. The only way I can get Work (or PP, or Excel) to release is to hang up the Dial up. I may try a reinstall, but am reluctant as I have still to update Office via the Dial-up, about two hours of download time.

Some computers come with a free 30 version of ms office, but I deleted mine rather then pay for it, because if I was going to buy it, I would have gotten a disc in my hand instead of "downloaded version" because I am parnoid that I will lose the number and get it deleted, and not be able to install it. But, I would not make any changes without back up disc of the OS. Is it HP? You can order them from HP if it is less then two years old. I used to have a sony lap top and it came with microsoft money, and games that took like all the memory, so I kept deleting them, but that would make the whole system not work. Things could be different now. I have deleted microsoft office and no problems yet, but I have the back up disc in case. I bought microsoft office, because it was a cheap as microsoft word alone, but it did not work for me. I returned it for a full refund and bought just microsoft word which was all I needed. I don't know if any of this information will help you, but it always better to have recovery discs before doing anything. If you don't have them, you can returnd the computer to somewhere like best buy, and have them reinstall it. But, I have heard horror stories. Even if you pay to have someone else restore it to factory specs, it may or may not work the same.