Most economical way to run Windows and Office?

[kylera]

A while ago, I transferred schools, and recently, my licenses for Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2013, which I got from my old school, expired.

I don't have heavy needs for Office; I rely a fair bit on tracking changes and non-Roman alphabet documents. Office 2011 is horrible with rendering Korean text and I deal with Korean .doc files on a semi-regular basis (about once a month on average). I use PowerPoint only when I need to do a group presentation in Korean, and the number of times I deal with an Excel file per year can be counted on one hand.

I have access to a spare product key for Office 2010 Home courtesy of the family pack, and I believe I can get a copy of Windows 8.1 Embedded through Dreamspark.

As for options, here's what I thought of so far.

- Download a modern.ie image for VirtualBox and use snapshots to restore it once I can't /rearm, and install Office 2010
- Get Windows 8.1 from Dreamspark and install Office 2010 on Boot Camp
- Continue using my deactivated copies as is via Boot Camp or VMWare/Parallels
- Subscribe to a cloud service akin to CloudOn. The service I have access to here in Korea costs $16 a month, and the specs are as follows: 2 vCPU, 2GB RAM,50GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, Windows Server 2008 R2 in a Windows 7 theme, and a full copy of Microsoft Office 2010, and I can access this with any device I have
- Buy a $200 8-inch tablet that has a copy of Office 2013 and remote access it locally

Anything else I am missing or any advice?

 

[pedromcm.pm]

A while ago, I transferred schools, and recently, my licenses for Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2013, which I got from my old school, expired.

I don't have heavy needs for Office; I rely a fair bit on tracking changes and non-Roman alphabet documents. Office 2011 is horrible with rendering Korean text and I deal with Korean .doc files on a semi-regular basis (about once a month on average). I use PowerPoint only when I need to do a group presentation in Korean, and the number of times I deal with an Excel file per year can be counted on one hand.

I have access to a spare product key for Office 2010 Home courtesy of the family pack, and I believe I can get a copy of Windows 8.1 Embedded through Dreamspark.

As for options, here's what I thought of so far.

- Download a modern.ie image for VirtualBox and use snapshots to restore it once I can't /rearm, and install Office 2010
- Get Windows 8.1 from Dreamspark and install Office 2010 on Boot Camp
- Continue using my deactivated copies as is via Boot Camp or VMWare/Parallels
- Subscribe to a cloud service akin to CloudOn. The service I have access to here in Korea costs $16 a month, and the specs are as follows: 2 vCPU, 2GB RAM,50GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, Windows Server 2008 R2 in a Windows 7 theme, and a full copy of Microsoft Office 2010, and I can access this with any device I have
- Buy a $200 8-inch tablet that has a copy of Office 2013 and remote access it locally

Anything else I am missing or any advice?

If you have access to a ISO copy of windows, and a key to office, why not use bootcamp? Maximum performance, 0 headache, 0 cost.

 

[JackieInCo]

If you have access to a ISO copy of windows, and a key to office, why not use bootcamp? Maximum performance, 0 headache, 0 cost.

There is no better way to do this than Bootcamp.

 

[saturnotaku]

If you have access to a ISO copy of windows, and a key to office, why not use bootcamp? Maximum performance, 0 headache, 0 cost.

You don't need maximum performance to simply run Office. VirtualBox doesn't cost anything and would be sufficient if all you need Windows for is that single application.