Shopper : Does it come with a cd/dvd drive?ERIC J : NOPE ~ ! BUT IT NEEDS ONE
ALAN F : I am buying this laptop for backup storage from my Dell PC....will I be able to transfer word and excel documents back and forth?JAY S : Um, sort of. You can run free-software applications on it that can read and edit Word and Excel documents, but the OS is Ubuntu Linux, not Windows, and so *actual* Word and Excel won't run on it. (Also it will ship with a different selection of fonts.) For most purposes, that would be OK, but you may find that formatting gets messed up here and there. If this is just personal or routine work documents (letters, etc.) you'd probably be fine, but if you were doing anything fancy like preparing copy for submission to a journal or to a print shop, you'd probably want real Word and Excel — which means a laptop with Windows (or MacOS X), not Ubuntu. (Aside from formatting, macros tend not to work properly.)
Disclaimer: I've only tried to mess with Word documents on Linux (in LibreOffice and AbiWord). The situation with Excel spreadsheets might be better or worse.
Versaviya K : can you use microsoft word etc on it?NICHOLAS G : As is no, you can't. It's running Linux and has a program called Libre Office which can save docs as a word doc and read them as well, so it is compatible with those files. It also has an excel and PowerPoint program.JAY S : Not without buying a copy of Microsoft Windows (and Microsoft Word). This laptop is shipped running Ubuntu Linux, and Microsoft has not deigned to release a version of Word (or Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) for Linux.
However, you can use the free LibreOffice office suite, which can read and write Microsoft Office files pretty smoothly. For most purposes that will work, and (modulo minor font or pagination issues) you should be able to take files back and forth between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office without much trouble. You do need to make sure to save documents in Microsoft Office format if you're going to send them to people using Microsoft Office.
One exception would be documents that have embedded macros in Visual Basic (usually for things like document automation). But for typical word-processor and spreadsheet use LibreOffice should be fine.
Apparently I am not supposed to include links here, but if you google for "LibreOffice" and/or for "LibreOffice Microsoft compatibility" you'll find a lot more information.
I *believe* the laptop shipped with LibreOffice on it. Not 100% sure since it was a gift for my partner; I know she's using LibreOffice now but I'm not 100% sure she didn't install it after the fact. But it's free and easy to install via the Ubuntu menus if it's not already on there.H C : It comes with Libre office, which seems to be Ubuntu's version of Microsoft office, & possibly Microsoft word. You could try downloading Micosoft word, but I don't think it's compatible with Ubuntu. You may have to partition the hard drive & download a Windows operating system.JAMES B : Yes if you must, but be sure to check on whether or not you like a quertiop keyboard in the winter time.
