So after not having MS Office installed on my new rig because I thought I already had it......

Turns out the product code that I got with Mrs DD's laptop was a one time deal which I didn't notice until I went to install it back in December.

So being a bit short of €139 to purchase the office suite I was left wondering what to do as I didn't really want to do anything illegal like trying to obtain a dodgy copy.

Step forward Kingsoft: http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

Free office software that may not be quite up to MS standards but importantly is compatible with MS documents so I can now open all my old word docs again, 

This will do for now until I can afford to make a purchase of MS Office suite, of course if it turns out to be any good I may save myself the €139 after all 

I looked at open office Data, they didn't seem to have a version for windows 7 or 8 that I could locate, in fact the Wiki entry suggests that Open Office is now defunct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

I suspect I missed something there

Yes I use Open Office, have done for years. As far as I know they are still developing it, their blog seems to imply so, I don't know what that wiki page is on about, it's still a goer. And yep works fine on Windows 7...

https://www.openoffice.org/download/

I also use Open Office on my Win7 rig, and on my Win8 VM. Does the job nicely. Uncle Bill is rich enough, I think.

Seems OK so far for a freebie