While you might have to use a Windows operating system, you don't have to use any other of Microsoft's software if you don't want to, there are expreadsheet programs that might be Excel compatible made by others and as to browsers, well I am finding out that both K-Meleon and FireFox are very good, now I like the newest K-Meleon version the best of them all, now I hardly ever use FireFox and Internet Explorer, if you like lots of browsers' extensions and plug-ins then use Firefox, otherwise instead use K-Meleon, to me it's TOPS, the best of the best.
Try Open Office or some of the other many free and or almost free office suites and or spreadsheet programs.
MicroSoft? Who are they?.
There are so very many very good freeware programs that you won't often have to buy them.
Foe example take a look at the FreeWheeler, for all the money in the world you just can't buy a better filtered wheeler for the pick 3 and it is free, a close second is the Crunch 3 which in the future just might be better than the FreeWheeler unless Ricky keeps on working on it.
Most of my software is freeware and non-Microsoft.
By the way, Why depend on only one hard drive partition and when it goes KAPUT every thing goes too with it.
I have a hard drive chock-full of operating systems, it has many partitions in it and most of them hold fully operational Windows' operating systems in them the rest are for storage of downloaded programs and files.
When you have a big hard drive then you can do that.
I have a main partition copy and when one of the other copies goes bad for whatever reason, I copy the main copy into that particular partition and I am good to go again for that partition, it takes only about 10 minutes to copy one partition into any other one.
If in a hurry, just reboot into any other of the very many partititions they are all completely operational Windows' operating systems complete with all drivers and all other programs needed such as lottery programs and even the latest updates.
If you want to, they can all be identical clones (copies) or they can have different applications in them, like one partition just for lottery programs other for music another for pictures and or movies another just for text ebooks another just for games and or whatever, you can even have 2 or even 3 partitons with the very same stuff or even more of them, you can have up-to 100 fully operational Window's partitions and each of them fully complete with any and all programs and utilities that you want to put in each of them.
Blue screen of death and or computer crashes? What is that? Viruses and Trojans? What are those? Rebulid any one of the partitions complete with all drivers and any and all programs already installed in it only a few minutes.
How is that for Pc invulnerability?
Good luck.