It sounds like the Office 2010 notification is something that was put into Windows 7. You shouldn't need to load 2010 just to open 2010/2007 documents, however. All you should need is the Office compatibility pack for 2003:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...displaylang=en

Office 2007/2010 natively save files in .docx, .xlsx, etc formats. Both programs are backwards compatible to open the .doc, .xls, etc files from Office 2003 and prior. Office 2003 needs the compatibility pack to open the files from subsequent versions, however. I suspect that you already had the compatibility pack installed in your Office 2003 on the office computer.

Hope this helps.

-SW