We will be looking at a used Toshiba A305-S6872 today. The seller claims that is has both Microsoft Office and Norton 360 on it. In reading the Toshiba website I see that their products come with these pre-installed in a trial version. Does anyone know how I can tell the difference if it is just the trials running?

In news:eee47e57387f77e1fbe5e6a430e9f394@nntp-gateway.com,
lkint typed on Mon, 4 May 2009 13:33:15 +0100:
> We will be looking at a used Toshiba A305-S6872 today. The seller
> claims that is has both Microsoft Office and Norton 360 on it. In
> reading the Toshiba website I see that their products come with these
> pre-installed in a trial version. Does anyone know how I can tell the
> difference if it is just the trials running?

"Once activated, trial software will be fully functional for
approximately 60 days. The trial period begins to run when you activate
the software and the length of the trial period will vary depending on
when the trial was activated. The trial software will only expire at the
last day of the month within a user's trial period. During the
activation process, you will be notified of the date on which the trial
period will expire." - Microsoft

http://buy20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/...&culture=en-US

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

The difference is that the trial versions only run for a relatively
short period (30 to 90 days, typically), then they stop running and you
have to buy the "full product".

In the case of Norton, what expires is your update SUBSCRIPTION; usually
the program per se continues working, but you can't get virus updates.
This isn't usually a critical issue for a few months, unless a new major
virus happens to come out.

Although in the past Norton has been poorly regarded, they really have
cleaned up their act in the past 2 years (since the 2007 versions), and
many people (me included) consider NIS (Norton Internet Security) to be
the best security suite at this time (even when it's not the "best" ...
(everyone's "best" seems to differ) all of the ratings have it very near
the top). (I prefer NIS to Norton 360). The best way to get this is to
buy it at retail when it's on sale. In almost all cases, if you are
patient and can wait up to 3 or 4 months, you can get it completely free
(the 3-user version even) after rebate if you have a previous qualifying
product (which usually means any security product by any publisher, not
just Norton). If you do that, remove the pre-installed version
completely and install the retail product from scratch.

In the case of Office, the "Home" version of Office appears on sale for
$99 quite often (list price is $150; other sale prices between $99 and
$150 are often seen also). This is for installation on up to 3
machines, so it's $33 to $50 per machine. It's a very reasonable price.
The only thing I really, really don't like are that I don't like the
ribbon and prefer the classical "menu" structure, and also the "Home"
version of Office 2007 does not have Outlook. For these reasons, I
personally still prefer the 2003 version of Office.


lkint wrote:
> We will be looking at a used Toshiba A305-S6872 today. The seller
> claims that is has both Microsoft Office and Norton 360 on it. In
> reading the Toshiba website I see that their products come with these
> pre-installed in a trial version. Does anyone know how I can tell the
> difference if it is just the trials running?
>
>

lkint wrote:
> We will be looking at a used Toshiba A305-S6872 today. The seller
> claims that is has both Microsoft Office and Norton 360 on it. In
> reading the Toshiba website I see that their products come with these
> pre-installed in a trial version. Does anyone know how I can tell the
> difference if it is just the trials running?
>
>
Check the Help tab/ under About, it should tell you if it is a full
version or not.