Originally Posted by cubbie

There's a lot of interesting stuff for me to reflect on and reply to in this thread, but let me just interject here that this IS the situation: Loved One needs to be able to work in Word and Excel 2003 and with XP away from the home office at times --- sometimes in another part of the house, sometimes at a customer's house. He does not need to get on the internet while he's doing that or email files. He can wait til he gets back to a safe computer to do that. He just needs to be able to work on Word and Excel files, alone or with a customer, in the version he's comfortable with (2003 or using something like Ubit that will emulate 2003).