Computer Questions

[Tom Hamilton]

Hi expert woodworkers and computer guru's:

Here's the problem: The desktop computer has all the Office 2000 software and 5 years of created documents.

The laptop,on a wireless network, has only Works, and some of the created documents.

So, is there a way to sync or coordinate these two boxes.

I really would like to be able to use the Office 00 software on the laptop. I believe that the MS rules prohibit dual use, those I'm not positive of that and I havn't yet tried to load the program from the discs;

so,

1.Will MS Office 00 run from a USB drive that I plug in and out of the two computers?


2.Can I access the desktop through the wireless connection and run the software from the laptop?

3.Any other solutions?

Thanks, Tom

[Chris Gregory]

Hi expert woodworkers and computer guru's:

Here's the problem: The desktop computer has all the Office 2000 software and 5 years of created documents.

The laptop,on a wireless network, has only Works, and some of the created documents.

So, is there a way to sync or coordinate these two boxes.

I really would like to be able to use the Office 00 software on the laptop. I believe that the MS rules prohibit dual use, those I'm not positive of that and I havn't yet tried to load the program from the discs;

so,

1.Will MS Office 00 run from a USB drive that I plug in and out of the two computers?


2.Can I access the desktop through the wireless connection and run the software from the laptop?

3.Any other solutions?

Thanks, Tom

Hi Tom,

MS does allow a single user to use the same license on a desktop and laptop for most of theri applications, OS is normally preloaded nowadays when you buy a system. What is the OS on your laptop?

My first concern for you would be wether you have run any kind of backups five years of docs and files would be a terrible thing to lose and MS no longer supports 2000.

You could run a peer to peer network through USB ports and allow file sharing but if I were you the first thing I would do is a complete backup of the desktop HD then start moving files around.

Cheers,
Chris

[Brian Austin]

1.Will MS Office 00 run from a USB drive that I plug in and out of the two computers?

No, since the application needs to be installed on each system. An installation puts files in a variety of places and not a single folder.

2.Can I access the desktop through the wireless connection and run the software from the laptop?

Kind of. On the laptop, you'd have to install the software on a 'shared drive' that would be located on the desktop. You're going to have issues with Windows XP Home Edition, however, since MS specifically limited networking abilities in that version.

3.Any other solutions?

I'm hesitant to say that MS actually DOES allow multiple installations of the same software. MS Office 2000 is pre-"activation" days, iirc, so it won't check to see if you're installing in multiple locations. You can read through the novel-like license agreement to see if there is something relevant to your situation. MS has changed that document over time and I don't remember your particular version.

That said, I DO have home-use rights for my company's software for current employees. But it's specifically called out in my license agreement with Microsoft. Not sure how it extends to your situation, though.

[Monte Milanuk]

If both computers are going to be 'online' and connected to a network whenever you'd be using them, such as just wanting to run/use Office from the laptop while sitting in the couch or out in the shop... might look into VNC. Basically it's a free implementation of a remote desktop... when you activate the link, you can connect and 'use' the desktop computer *from* the laptop. There's a little bit of network lag, so it's not quite as fast as having the appliations actually installed on the laptop, but it's free

Try searching for 'tightVNC' or 'UltraVNC' for a couple flavors.

Another handy use for this is monitoring kids on their computer... you can 'observe' from the background w/o watching over their shoulder.

HTH,

Monte

[Tom Hamilton]

Thanks, fellows, for the info.

Chris, backups are in place for the important stuff.

Monte, I'm on the trail for the VNC info.

Brian, I'll look into the shared drive concept.


The IT jock at church might be interested in a little "moonlight"...I'll see what he says also.

Thanks, Tom

[Ian Abraham]

As others have mentioned you can technically load Office2K on your laptop and share the documents via a shared folder on your desktop. XP Home allows basic networking like that. Legally however you should have another licence for Office.
Another (legal) option is to load Open Office on the laptop, it will let you load and save Word documents via a network share. You may have some issues with formatting depending on how the documents are set up though.
When you set up sharing just ensure that you dont share your machine with the rest of the neighbourhood or the whole internet . (yes I've seen it done). Without knowing your network / internet connection setup it's hard to say, but make sure you have some sort of router / firewall between your internal network and the rest of the world and encrypt your wireless link.

Cheers

Ian

[Jim Becker]

Install OpenOffice (free) on the notebook and you are done. It will read and write the Office documents. (I'll never buy an upgrade to MS Office again for personal use...) Both machines can then access the same documents via sharing on your network and both "office" suites work pretty much the same, so no operator confusion will likely be present.

[Tom Hamilton]

Thanks, Jim. The breadth and depth of your knowledge has ceased to amaze me. I now just suck it in with a grateful thank-you.

Here's wishing you, Allison, and the girls a wonderful 06.

Best regards, Tom

[Frank Hagan]

Jim is right ... OpenOffice.org is the way to go for this type of thing. We're close to spec'ing it for our company systems. I use it on my home systems now.

The Word documents should be absolutely fine. Some macros in Excel might not work the same, but all of the documents I have opened in Word and then Open Office work flawlessly.

[Chris Gregory]

Jim,

Great tip on OpenOffice.org Tom is right your breadth of knowledge is quite amazing