Using Office 2003 with Vista x64 SP2 (After April)

[Jody Thornton]

I was quite concerned about what real world security risks there might be if I continued using Office 2003 after the support cutoff date. I am sure that retaining Outlook 2003 would increase the security risk, but how about the other applications?

[Jody Thornton]

Wow nothing eh? Oh well - that's bumped it...lol

[ND22]

I am in the exact same situation as you! I have a Vista 64 machine with office 2003; I use heavily Word and Excel but I don't use outlook! I believe that the rest of the applications are safe to use even after April 2014. Since I bought office 2003 back in 2005 I grew accustomed to it and I believe I know it inside out so I don’t have any intention to move to a newer version just to learn how to use office all over again; for me the GUI of 2003 is just perfect.

Edited December 12, 2013 by ND22

[dencorso]

I use Office 97 on some machines and Office 2000 on others. The ribbon is evil and should be avoided and forgotten. I won't move on to any newer Office, nor will I stop using XP SP3. Why, if I still use 98SE in this day and age (although not every day anymore), why would I bother with April 2014 (98SE's support ended July 2006)? Then again, I don't use Outlook, since 2003, when I did use Outlook Express for a short spell... and moved on to web-mail for good. MS has the right to stop supporting OSes and software it supported for so long... just as one has the right to say "so, what?", and keep using them. That's my 2¢, of course, so YMMV.

[Jody Thornton]

So I take it you'd agree to ABSOLUTELY NOT EVER use Outlook 2003 again, eh? See I really like Outlook 2003, so it bothers me a great deal to abandon it.

[dencorso]

Yes, but not for the reasons you may imagine. What I really loved to do was to telnet into the mainframe and then use pine from there. This was the best way to keep one's e-mail accessible from wherever one might be, but worked well just for 7-bit ASCII e-mail (and I stuck to it until nobody wanted to provide e-mail in this way, anymore). I never actually used Outlook 2003, just Outlook Express (the one that came with XP) for a short spell, then Eudora, for an even shorter spell. Then on to remote web-mail and never looked back. Keeping the client remote also affords some real anti-malware protection, but that was never my main concern, in this matter. By far, most malware problems are due to PEBCAK, anyway, IMO.

[Jody Thornton]

Hey dencorso, it sounds as if you are more "anti-client" rather than "anti-OL 2003". I guess what I really wonder if how much more unsafe is it to run Outlook 2003 than it is to run say Outlook 2013 or 2007.

[dencorso]

Sure. I think web-mail rocks and is actually also safer (because you only transfer back to your machine things you specifically select consciously, with reading and previewing happening at the host, not at your machine, so most infecting things never leave the host and are his problem to deal with). That said, my take is that Outlook 2003 will be somewhat more dangerous than those clients under MS support, but I wouldn't use any of those without a reliable 3rd party antivirus solution with real-time scanning, specific for Outlook, being active on my machine at all times Outlook is actively working. All local clients are dangerous, and all must have real-time antimalware active to be safe enough... IMO. YMMV, of course.

[Jody Thornton]

I've opted to go with Kingsoft Office 2012/2013 Professional.

So long Microsoft Office (unless you want to make a product like v2003 again...lol)