Office 2003 works on Vista, Vista Basic is only a 99 dollar upgrade(and no its not crippled the only major difference between that and Ultimate and Premium is the lack of Media Center and AeroGlass), so unless you have 10 computers you wont be spending that much to upgrade your PC's.
You must have a boat load of Microsoft stock or be Gate's brother in law....saw an earlier thread where you were defending Vista. Tell you what.....I would give 99 bucks to get Vista uninstalled and XP installed on the machine I bought a couple of weeks ago. Vista, IMHO, as the kids say "sucks"!
Does basic support the dual processors...?