i need microsoft office things like word and excel

It's better to use Libre office or Open office software. By default the Libre office comes with your ubuntu Operating system in recent releases. The above softwares have word, excel and power point similar to microsoft office. If you don't satisfy with this answer please post another message in this thread inorder to answer some other community member.

Nick,

You can load wine (it's in the Ubuntu Software Center) and then run MS Office using that. Also, if you search in the Ubuntu Software Center you can find 'crossover office', which is a commercial product you can buy which will allow you to load MS office and many other MS products on your Ubuntu operating system.

If you absolutely need to use MS then this is the way to go. Otherwise, bothe OpenOffice and LibreOffice can open MS files and save them back to .doc, .xls etc. I suggest you download and install the LibreOffice and have a play around with it and see if it meets your needs. I suspect it will if you take the time to try it.

Thanks
Paul

no need to spend $100 to get microshaft office. you can get libreoffice free. it is installed with ubuntu 11.04. openoffice is installed with 10.04.

anyways, libreoffice has advanced to the degree that your teachers won't be able to tell if you used microshaft office or libreoffice. both offer the same features.

word is called writer in libre/openoffice
excel is called calc