The Microsoft Office 2007 System is a resource hog just as big as Windows Vista. No wonder that Microsoft is marketing its top cash cows side-by-side. If you thought that the Windows Vista system requirements are a tad excessive then just take a look at the Office 2007.

According to the Redmond Company's official Office 2007 website, the suites require a minimum of 500 megahertz (MHz) processor or higher and 256 megabyte (MB) RAM or higher. These two values apply to all but one of the collection of Office suites.

Office Basic 2007, Office Standard 2007, Office Home and Student 2007, Office Professional 2007, Office Small Business 2007, Office Professional Plus 2007, Office Enterprise 2007, Office Ultimate 2007, Office Access 2007, Office Excel 2007, Office InfoPath 2007, Office Groove 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Outlook 2007, Office PowerPoint 2007, Office Publisher 2007, Office Word 2007 and Office Multi-Language Pack 2007 will all install and run with just 256 MB RAM and a 500 MHz processor. The only exception to this rule is Office Accounting 2007 which requires a 1 GB processor and 512 MB RAM.

However, the key words for the Office 2007 system requirements are "or higher." Meaning:

- 2 gigahertz (GHz) processor or higher and 1 GB RAM or higher recommended for OneNote Audio Search.
- 1 gigahertz (GHz) processor or higher and 512 MB RAM or higher recommended for Business Contact Manager.
- 512 MB RAM or higher recommended for Outlook Instant Search.
- Grammar and contextual spelling in Word is not turned on unless the machine has 1 GB memory.

The bottom line? Sure 256 MB RAM and a 500 MHz processor may very well be the minimum system requirements for Office 2007, but if you really want the suite to fly, then you need at least a 2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.