Microsoft Corp. will reportedly offer new pricing on its Office productivity suite for the Macintosh next month. The move will not only reduce the price of Office, but Microsoft will also offer three versions of the suite.
Beginning in August, Microsoft will offer a Student and Teacher version of Office as well as a Professional Edition that will include the recently acquired Virtual PC and a Standard Edition that will be identical to the currently shipping suite. Ziff Davis reports the changes will take effect on August 12.
The Professional edition will ship with Virtual PC 6.1 as well as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the company’s personal information manager, Entourage. The Professional edition will cost $US499 with upgrades costing $329.
The Student and Teacher version will be a full version of Office that will cost $149 and include a license for up to three users.
Office Standard Edition will drop in price from $499 to $399; the upgrade price will go from $299 to $239. The standalone version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint will drop in price from $399 to $229; the upgrade price will drop from $149 to $109. The standalone version of Entourage will remain as it is now at $99.