Office 97 not only has everything most people need (wordpad has all features most people need; most users have no need for Excel or other office tools) it also starts up faster and uses less resources. The only question is do you actually need any of the massive quantity of features in modern office, or is word processing today still fairly simple for you. And maybe if you don't like MDI and want your multiple windows instead (the thing I miss most about old office is having 15 documents open in a single window when writing essays in school, without cluttering up alt-tab or the taskbar. That and the toolbar button that initiates the active screensaver). If you want to use your cloud storage (you really don't need it most likely) you'll have to use a sync tool instead of having it directly. Turn off macros for security and make sure it can actually run (no idea when office stopped using 16 bit components), and I recommend firewalling it as well, but office doesn't really need to be up to date.