Nah, 03 is still new. This is an dinosaur:

agree'd

I use Kingsoft Office 2012

Hey Shane, long time no see, how you been?

Also remaining slightly on topic I have never heard of that, i'll google it

I'm not sure about Office, but typically the way that MS does this is via elections. Certain components will get a certain number of votes, and as long as you don't change too many things at once, the license remains good.

Some components like the MB usually get more votes than something like the GPU or NIC.

And, if you need to change more than that, you just call MS and they'll deactivate the previous computer and allow you to install on a new computer. And you can probably just uninstall and leave it uninstalled until the previous information expires. XP had a period of 120 days, so if you could do without for that long, you could avoid talking with MS at all to activate.

But, that's old information, I'm not sure what the current set up is. But, it's a wise idea to just swap in one component at a time, and reactivate with each change. That way, you minimize the likelihood of having to call in for reactivation.
Wasn't that office XP? Or was XP 2002?

Anyways, if I were to reinstall Office it would be the last one before all that ribbon crap came in and destroyed productivity. In practice though, I rarely need anything that isn't available in Libreoffice.

Eventually, I got rid of my copy of Office XP.

Nope. I still use 2003 and will for as long as I can. I'm a power user in 03 - but I feel stupid when I try to sit down at somebody else's machine and do basic things with the newer versions of some of the apps - particularly Excel. I think many corps still use 03 for this very reason. MSFT alienated me with the update past 03, and makes me reluctant to change. I think some corporations are slow to upgrade because of the discontinuity and training to get people back up to speed, and the fact that with Access in particular it causes problems if you have an organization on 2 different versions.

I seriously tried Open Office at one point for my hope computers and was underwhelmed. If you do any slide presentations - I think Powerpoint is far superior to anything in open office. I tried the OpenOffice spreadsheet and it's nowhere near as usable as Excel (at least for builder-folks who need alot of functionality. Might be Ok for mostly end user usage.) And, well Access is Access if you need a dbase. It does it's thing and I was never inspired to learn something else for what I was doing. Database guys consider it a toy, but it's more than powerful enough for the things that I used it for at home.

Me too. As far as I'm concerned, the ribbon interface was a mistake, one that MS simply refuses to acknowledge by insisting that it is better, all evidence to the contrary. But then, that seems to be their thing: forcing unsuitable GUIs on people who don't want them.

Microsoft Office 2010 was released when Microsofts capital was worth $36 billion more than it is today. http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/19/as-shares-fall-12-percent-microsoft-experiences-its-biggest-drop-since-2000/

And in terms of functionality.....well....I don't know

Ouch, am I to understand that you still use it?

MS Office XP is one version older than MS Office 2003.
The ribbon menus were introduced in MS Office 2007.

2003 for me, too, though I have LibreOffice installed also. Just haven't played with it much.

My Outlook 2003 is friggin' wonky as hell, so I'd like to find an (free) alternative that has similar calendar functionality. Not Google.

I'm running 2010, but do miss 2003. I still have a copy of 2000 that I can install on as many computers as I want, but I would choose 2003 over it.
I still have 97, 2000, 2003, 2007, and 2010, any of the newer ones I refuse to purchase. I am afraid that they will use that Modern UI crap in the newer Office versions, and the ribbon was bad enough.

They consider it a toy because it is. The good part is that Access can link to real SQL databases. It then becomes a nice way to manipulate data on those, create reports, etc. Using the internal db engine is asking for trouble but if you do use it, I hope you have a decent backup plan for that db file. Hopefully something that also supports file versioning.

I honestly used it only once. I was in dire need of a fast way to send some billable hours reports to the guys I was working with and since I was new to it I created something nice in about 2 hours. After that, during the next weekend I created my own custom solution using python, mysql and "web magic"

There is a saying, which I think originated at MS - "If you take a bad idea, and push it hard enough, you can turn it into a good idea".

They're nearly there with the ribbon. People are coming round to it.

Where I worked, I used access to do monthly data updates from various disparate sources, much of which did not even yet exist in database or table form. (grabbing data out of legacy systems and reports using a tool called Monarch sometimes). We didn't even have access to SQL tools without going through IT dept which made anything requiring getting them involved about 10x more complicated than it needed to be for quick turnaround work. Some of we'd pull out of systems like Business Objects or Brio or other "big" systems, but bringing it all into series of linked Access databases where we could combine it all.

Only issue I ran up against w/ Access was running up against the 2G limit and having to split out databases and prune out data to keep things from getting too big, updates take too long. For non-IT folks there's alot useful that can be done. Data I was working with was mostly quoting level, sales ratios, competitive position info (pricing info vs. competitors in various zip geographies), market shares, risk concentrations, and other demographics type stuff.