Microsoft has revealed Office 2010 pricing for Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and Professional Academic editions. Office will come in both boxed versions and “key card” versions that have no media.
Microsoft has revealed Office 2010 pricing for Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and Professional Academic editions. Office will come in both boxed versions and “key card” versions that have no media.
Microsoft dumps upgrade pricing for Office 2010
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dumps_upgr…
It doesn’t matter really. Lets look newegg prices and compare them to new prices. Professional upgrade costs 329$ which is pretty much same as 349$ Key Card version. Normal 2007 professional costs 499$ in newegg, again same price as 2010 except you get 2 licenses with new one. It’s pretty much same with all other SKUs.
So yes Microsoft cut out stupid upgrade discs but overall it didn’t actually affect pricing so much.
That is pretty hefty pricing per seat compared with the cost of a very comparable product in OpenOffice.org, and even compared with the price of a humble netbook or smartbook machine upon which one could easily run OpenOffice.org and have it fully pre-installed for you at purchase.
In fact it would appear as if one can buy an ultraportable machine (both hardware and software) with OpenOffice.org already pre-installed, ready to go and fully and perpetually licensed for almost exactly the same price ($349) as a single copy of Office 2010 software only.
http://www.zareason.com/shop/product.php?productid=16216&cat=0&page…
Edited 2010-01-06 11:47 UTC
Except that Openoffice is not compatible with some of Office’s features and renders documents incorrectly on occasion. Nothing against OO there on my part, even different versions of Office will often have this issue.
You have to hand it to Microsoft though, they are experts at convincing someone they need a product they do not and then locking them in tight to it.
Indeed. In fact, if we consider compatibility with formats and general interoperability and standards compliance in general as an issue, OpenOffice.org wins hands down. ODF, PDF, SVG, older legacy versions of MS Office, WordPerfect and an array of other formats including open media formats such as Vorbis and Theora … OpenOffice handles it all far better and is far more interoperable across different platforms, including handheld devices. This all makes it immeasurably better for document exchange purposes and document archival purposes as well.
They haven’t convinced me that I need their software, and indeed by not using their software I enjoy full capabilities and remain interoperable and not locked in at all.
Indeed, they haven’t covinced an estimated 20% to 25% of office software users in general, as that is the estimated installed base of OpenOffice.org.
It is just unfortunately taking a little time for the slower 75% of office software users to wake up to all this.
Edited 2010-01-06 13:12 UTC
Estimated installed base, or estimated “forced down the throat of people despite their wishes” base?
I know, they tried at my work, but backed off due to the massive uproar. The poor students had it stick though, so now they have a portable pirated Office 2007 version on a USB key they carry around to work with.
I’d spit 300 bucks to use MSO instead of having to suffer OOO tbh. And I don’t need you trying to explain to me how much OOO is better suited for my needs, I know my needs, they’re mine, that’s why they’re called “my needs”. The Office suite is actually a very nice piece of software, and I never have any issue paying for very nice pieces of software I use and like to use everyday.
Estimated installed base. The 20% to 25% figure is based on the number of downloads … you know, people who actively sought it out and spent their time and effort to download it.
The figure is only estimated because for every copy that is downloaded, there may be multiple installations on many machines, since the license permits this. Indeed, there are many cases where one downloaded copy has been installed on thousands of machines. The estimated figure does not take this into account … in the absence of indicative data, this estimate simply assumes one machine installation per download.
Edited 2010-01-07 02:43 UTC
Of course the pirate versions will be free – I don’t expect I’ll see a legal version here – unless I buy one and I’m still using Office 2000 quite happily
There is a reason why people use Microsoft Office – and it has nothing to do with an ‘addiction’ to Microsoft products. I use Office 2008 on my Mac because I need the bibliographic functions which iWork and OpenOffice.org fail to provide – and I’ve seen the half assed, half baked crap version (bibliographical facility) on OpenOffice.org and quite frankly I wouldn’t wish it on my worse enemy.
There are reasons for using Microsoft Office, and quite honestly if I was running Windows I’d be running Office just as I am very happy with running Microsoft Office 2008 on my Mac. It has been almost 9 months since OpenOffice.org 3.1 was released and yet when I look at OpenOffice.org 3.2 – it is still the same train wreck of an office suite with the developers doing very little to improve the user experience.
If those developers had half a brain they would all invest in a copy of Microsoft Office and scan every part of the UI, every part of the Office suite and ask themselves “why is it so popular” – and not resort to screaming “file format lock in” as an excuse. What features does it have that people like? why do people like the GUI? what are the underlying principles that can be transposed from Office to OpenOffice.org – how many OpenOffice.org developers actually ask those questions? from the view of the 9months, they don’t ever seem to ask those questions.
Edited 2010-01-07 00:08 UTC
So I’m guessing that the new $99 “Professional Academic” edition will replace the current $59 “Ultimate Steal” edition of Office for college students?
Right now I’m using Home and Student edition instead because it was on sale for $99, and because it allows installation on three PCs at the same time. Visio and Project are supplied through MSDN. I’m guessing the Professional Academic version will differentiate itself by being tied down to a single PC.
Edited 2010-01-06 15:32 UTC