Personally I prefer OpenOffice, but MS Office has its fans – the OneNote component in particular seems to be all the rage at the moment amongst students. The big drawback with MS Office, though, is the cost – the student price for Office 2007 Enterprise Edition is £89.99, while OneNote 2007 on its own will put you back £15.

But there is a way that some people can get hold of a copy of MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition (which includes OneNote), direct from Microsoft, for just £17.49 including postage & packaging. Details below the cut.

The key is, you need to be working for a company that has some sort of volume licensing agreement with Microsoft – usually either an Enterprise Agreement or a Software Assurance Agreement. These usually (but not always) also include membership of Microsoft’s Home Use Program, which allows employees of companies that have signed up to the program to buy Office for just a nominal shipping charge. Technically, if you then leave the company you have to stop using any applications you bought under the Home Use Program, but that’s not exactly easy for Microsoft to police.

You’ll need your company’s “program key” to access the HUP website – you should be able to get this from your IT department, but from personal experience you’ll need to be a bit more creative than just ‘phoning the Helpdesk to get it. While a volume licensing agreement gets companies onto HUP, very few seem to do anything to promote it (or even realise the facility is there), so you may need to speak to someone a bit higher in the food chain to get the required details. Be persistent.

Once you have the program key, just go to the HUP website, enter your details, and Microsoft will email you a link to the program’s ordering page. Allow a few weeks for delivery, and you’re sorted. Microsoft have a FAQ page for HUP, here.