Licenses for Office 2003 pro

The physical CD for your Office 2000 installations is not nearly as important as having the "Certificate of Authenticity" (license) for each station.

If you upgrade, to Office 2003, and get audited, you need to show the original qualifying license for each upgraded installation.

Since you imply that you do not have licenses for all of the Office 2000 installations, the Office 2003 upgrade would NOT make those stations legitimate.

Have you considered getting just Access for those uses who primarily need Access and installing Open Office for their day to day word processing and spreadsheet work?

Chas

OpenOffice is indeed an option but I am aware that many companies do not feel comfortable with this solution from a support and user experience point of view.

There is another solution which isn't strictly ethical but legal...

You could have a look at OEM licences.
Strictly speaking these should only be sold in conjunction with a new PC. But...

The rule states (amongst other things) that :
OEM system builder software packs are intended for PC and server manufacturers or assemblers ONLY. They are not intended for distribution to end users. Unless the end user is actually assembling his/her own PC, in which case, that end user is considered a system builder as well.

The question now is - do you / could you consider yourself a system builder ? If the answer is yes, then you are free to buy OEM licenses.

If you find yourself able to buy OEM instead of Open Volume (pricing you received from Dell), you should be able to save around 25-35% (depending on you vendor) on your office pro licenses.

Note that you will not be able to obtain OEM licenses from Dell as they regard this as competition to their own business.