The next generation of Office is here, and while it’s not necessarily an essential upgrade for Office 2010 users, it’s easily the best Office suite to date. Editing complicated financial spreadsheets has never been so semi-seamless!

That said, with this particular $100-plus investment, you’ll want to look before you leap. Whether you’re opting for a straightforward Office 2013 installation or the multi-PC, cloud-connected ubiquity of an Office 365 subscription, there are four potentially crippling gotchas to consider before you plunk down your hard-earned cash. I’ve also identified a supposed gotcha that you can actually ignore entirely.

1. Your computer may not run Office 2013.

Unlike Office 2010, Office 2013 does not work with Windows XP or Windows Vista. Yet the latest data from NetApplications shows that roughly 45 percent of all Internet users still rock those two aging operating systems. If you’re part of that sizable horde, there’s absolutely no reason to buy Office 2013—it won’t work on your system. And because an Office 365 Home Premium subscription simply lets you install the latest version of Office—Office 2013, again—on up to five PCs, you’ll want to pass on that as well.

2. Other computers may not run Office on Demand.

One of the big draws of an Office 365 subscription is Office on Demand, a full-fledged, Internet-streamed version of the productivity suite that Microsoft calls “Your Office away from home.” And it really, truly is—if the host computer meets the suite’s fairly stringent requirements. As with local installations of Office 2013, Office on Demand plays nice only with PCs running Windows 7 or 8. It also requires the PC to have a fairly modern browser: Internet Explorer 9 or later, Mozilla Firefox 12 or later, Apple Safari 5 or later, or Google Chrome 18 or later.

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