Rating: 
Summary: Not a good deal
Review: If everyone were still churning out stock options in their sleep and making money every time they went to the coffee machine, it wouldn't be so much of an issue. And if the licensing were less draconian, it wouldn't be so much of an issue.
But since we actually need to work to make a profit these days, it's not really smart to spew all this money at software that you're not even using, most of the time, to create your product.Have your office sysadmin or techwriter or something try out StarOffice or OpenOffice.org for a couple weeks, then train the rest of the company on how to switch. Using the same software all your professional life isn't in the bill of rights and the smart decision is to switch to something that works, that you can actually afford. If your employees or co-workers are smart enough to make whatever they're making, they're smart enough to switch to a different spreadsheet.
Rating: 
Summary: REAL SLOW
Review: I purchased this upgrade, because MS said it was basically 30% faster than Ofc 2000. NOT!... It's more like 30% slower! I use an Intel PIV 2.4 GHz with 1Gig DDR RAM with twin 80 WD SE drives, and an ATI 9000 Pro 128Meg video. There is not a lot of fluff apps loaded on this machine, because it is my primary business computer. Office XP Pro is amazingly much slower than Office 2000, especially Outlook. Between messages, it seems that it takes forever to load. Word is not used as my editor. Even with all the Service Packs (2) and updates installed. Even the machine performance degraded after installation. Prior to installation, speed wise, the computer would average 1100+ on pc pit stops performance test. Now, it averages 950+. Go figure... Functionality is basically the same as Office 2000 with one exception, Photo Draw has been removed from Office XP. (One less useable app, more money for Ofc XP). The graphics in each app is improved in Ofc XP, but what does that really provide? If you already have Office 2000 Pro, do not upgrade to Ofc XP Pro. Office XP Pro is definately not worth the additional $$$.
The only gain apparent is the improved graphic interface, but even that is not much, and not all that.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: All I can say is I have had Win 3.1, Win 95 and Win 98 then went to this upgrade. This is the best Windows yet....very stable and well very stable...it handles crashing programs very well and Windows does NOT crash, I have had WIN XP 2 months now and had it crash 1 time, ok let me repeat 1 time, where it could not recover. I HIGHLY recommend this item and I am very glad I upgraded to it. The most stable Windows ever. Sure I had to pay for it, but still, it is very stable... I highly recommend it, for the home or the professional version. Best windows eve.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Day, Another Release
Review: BOTTOM LINE:
If your Office is quite old (95, 97), you should upgrade.
If you are an Office expert, stretching your projects to use every ounce of capability, or your team makes big collaborative projects with Office, you should upgrade.
If you are in the other 95% of Office 2000 users, keep what you have, save your money, and enjoy. DETAILS:
Office XP is fine, usually. Works OK, usually. Doesn't have major bugs, seems a little more solid, but still occasionally crashes or has other problems. Office XP does all the same things as Office 2000, plus has the theoretical capability for voice & handwriting inputs. For most of us, with desktops PCs, that won't matter. Smart Tags will be occasionally helpful, but will always block off the cell you're about to edit, with unnecessary options for the cell you've just changed. A most confusing thing in Office XP is still its abuse of Microsoft's own Windows programming standards (published for others only?) in how it represents multiple open documents. Excel and Word act differently, both in violation of the rules, with multiple icons in your task bar for documents open in the same Word or Excel window. This confusion can hurt both inexperienced and power users alike: for example, when closing one document you may accidently close a second one with the same click. Finally, as usual, most of the changes are not in user-helping functionality, but are "under the hood", partially re-tooling Office to support Bill Gates' future software architecture visions and, in the long run, helping Microsoft.
Rating:
Summary: Explodes for no adequately explored reason, very overpriced.
Review: Not only do we continue to buy this overpriced software, but it continues to explode for no adequately explored reason, as well. As long as there was no actual choice, if one had to create Word files, then at least it made sense to use MS Office. However, now there is no reason to continue with the money flushing. StarOffice is a great deal cheaper, works generally the same way, reads and creates Word Excel and PowerPoint files, and is all in all an entirely adequate product. And yes, StarOffice runs on Windows too.
Rating:
Summary: How I Learned to Stop Spending, and Switch to StarOffice
Review: I think using MS Office is like smoking; OK, not deadly, but you don't realize how much money you're spending every day or year on stuff you don't need. Put together all the money you've spent on MS Office products in your lifetime, and it might be more than is in your 401k depending on how you did in the last couple years of the stock market. MS Office does work. Yes. Sometimes when I used it I would get the blue screen of death, sometimes not. It had its problems but we used it because we had to use it. Because everyone else used it and we had to, too. StarOffice does the same stuff, handles the same file formats, costs soooo much less money. OpenOffice.org, ditto, and free. The decision isn't really a hard one about whether MS Office is worth buying. You don't need MS Office to make MS Office files (StarOffice opens and creates Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files). Get StarOffice or OpenOffice.org and keep your money; Microsoft has enough.
Rating:
Summary: Industry standard but over featured and too buggy
Review: Chocked full of features. More than features than anybody will ever need, such as the dreadful team-cooperation feature set (probably copied from IBMs horribly buggy Lotus SmartSuite, which crashed all the time). Office too is still buggy after all these years. Ironically, this version seems more buggy than the previous version which was pretty stable in the end. Office is still not particularly user friendly either -- the excess of fluff-features complicates navigation. The horrible paper-clip "office assistant" is still around, despite what the press say. So, disappointing -- but the competition is much worse so you might as well succumb and buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Costs twice as much as my first car. Get OpenOffice.org.
Review: My first car in 1990 cost $$$ and was worth every penny. Microsoft Office, XP or other, not so much. It's good, but not compared to its price, and therefore not a good choice. If you haven't tried StarOffice or OpenOffice.org yet, or haven't tried the latest release, just do it. Unless you're a turbo macro user, or create feature-length animations in PowerPoint, you're spending a month's rent for nothing by buying MS Office. Plus, as other reviewers have mentioned, with this version you have to register and activate it before it expires. No more MS Office sharing. So anyway, be forewarned about the registration issue, and think about whether it's really worth twice as much as a rusty but dependable Datsun.
Rating:
Summary: To expensive for what it is
Review: I was about to buy this product since its the one I use at the office, but when I looked at the price I did some research first.
Why would I buy it, when I can get very similar alternatives for much less like StarOffice? of even for free (OpenOffice). It does have nice features but most of them I have never used. I have been using OpenOffice for the past 3 months and I haven't missed a feature yet. If you are buying this office suite I would recommend you try OpenOffice first, it could save you a lot of money.
Rating:
Summary: Why pay $$$ for a new version of Office?
Review: I mean have you ever used more then a fraction of Office features? When my wordpad at hope stopped to recognize office xp file format (which was not a problem with previous version of the office) I lookd for an alternative and I found one, for free: an application package from openoffice.org. 50 MB file reads md .doc format and doeas it all for free and very well.
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