Office 2003 & Vista compatability

[Sportsluvr]

My present XP laptop has been crashing, and it seems I'll be needing to buy a
new laptop very shortly.

Dell Small Business (who I buy from) offers their laptops with either Vista
or XP. If I choose to buy a Vista computer (Ultimate version), DELL gives
you the option of either buying Office 2003 or Office 2003.

While Office 2007 apparently has improvements over version 2003, the
interface/menu/tabs are radically different.

Questions:

1 ) If Dell is saying you CAN buy Office 2003 on a Vista system (Dell
preinstalls it), is there any compatbaility issues I need to know about? Are
any features/functions from Office 2003 (i.e. Word 2003, Excel 2003, PowerPt
2003) that won't work on Vista?
2) If I buy Vista 'Ultimate' version, do I need to indicate 32 bit or 64
bit for Office 2003?
3) If I instead buy Laptop with XP Professional, and need Outlook Express
6, and the laptop comes with IE 7 installed, does OE 6 come bundled with IE7
or do I need to get OE 6 seperately, and if so how (without having to
use/install IE 6)??

Thanks very much for your assistance!

 

[Sportsluvr]

typo in first posting---corrected below (sorry:


My present XP laptop has been crashing, and it seems I'll be needing to buy
a
new laptop very shortly.

Dell Small Business (who I buy from) offers their laptops with either Vista
or XP. If I choose to buy a Vista computer (Ultimate version), DELL gives
you the option of either buying Office 2003 or Office 2007.

While Office 2007 apparently has improvements over version 2003, the
interface/menu/tabs are radically different.

Questions:

1 ) If Dell is saying you CAN buy Office 2003 on a Vista system (Dell
preinstalls it), is there any compatbaility issues I need to know about?
Are
any features/functions from Office 2003 (i.e. Word 2003, Excel 2003, PowerPt
2003) that won't work on Vista?

2) If I buy Vista 'Ultimate' version, do I need to indicate 32 bit or 64
bit for Office 2003?

3) If I instead buy Laptop with XP Professional, and need Outlook Express
6, and the laptop comes with IE 7 installed, does OE 6 come bundled with IE7
or do I need to get OE 6 seperately, and if so how (without having to
use/install IE 6)??

Thanks very much for your assistance!

 

[Arun@microsoft]

1) You can definitely go in for the Vista one. Office 2003 will perfectly
fine in Vista and as of now i have never come across any compaibily issues.
The software will work with all its features. But the Speech recognition
features is now a part of Vista system and the office one may render useless.

2) And office as such does not have any 64 BIT editions. It comes only in
the 32 bit
so no worries there.

3) Also Outlook Express 6 will still be there even after you upgrade to IE7.
No issues there

Hope this answers your questions