I am buying a Dell 17" laptop.  Iam thinking about getting office 365.   I have some questions.

1.  If you buy the program outright instead of the subscription will microsoft do security updates to it?
2.  With the subscription how often is it it update?  For that matter how often is Window 10 updated?

My tinfoil hat maybe a little tight for the next question.
When office 365 updates, does it send  s copy of your word , excel etc. to microsoft?

Just use Open Office, it's free and supported.

Will it recognize existing word files?

Forget OpenOffice (a.k.a. StarOffice/OracleOffice) and go with LibreOffice.  Awesome office app.

The Google suite is the only way to go. Free and you have your documents everywhere!

Yes, MS will update all versions of Office.  The updates are very frequent -- often every day.  No big deal and you can just bypass them if you want to run them at a different interval, but it's best to just let it update.

No, none of your documents are sent to MS.  

No, LibreOffice and Google Suite are not in any way replacements for Office.  It simply doesn't work that way.  That's like saying notepad is a replacement for Word -- sure, if all you need is to dump a few words of text on the screen it's fine.  If you need correct and proper formatting and interchangeable formats between the rest of the planet, you buy office.

Have you even used LibreOffice?  I dont have any issues sharing or reading ms office files.

Notepad replacement for word?  Apples and oranges...

I've used all of them back to star office.

They're not ms compatible to a degree that makes them useful for anything other the the bare basics, notepad like text.

The new laptop came today.  When I finally got to the box that the laptop was in I could hear what sounded like gravel in the box.   When I opened the box I found the packet of silicon gel bb's was open and All the B's had fallen in to the box with the laptop in it.  The bbs were every where.  When I pulled the foam bag the laptop was in I watched real close there were no bb's in the bag or on the lap top.  I hope none of the bbs got into the laptop.  After it charges for a while I will look at it closer and make sure there are no bbs anywhere.