It's Monday, and it's early. If you're reading this post at the time that it was written, you're most likely at work. For many of us, being at work means spending a lot of our time in from of Microsoft Office. For those of you nodding at your monitor right now, you'll agree that despite all the bells and whistles that Redmond's flagship productivity suite offers, seeing a few refinements come to the software would be a welcome treat indeed.
Well, the treat is here, with the Mac Business Unit announcement this morning detailing the pricing for the various iterations of Mac Office 2011. Over all, things are looking pretty rosey for Mac Office users this time around, as Microsoft has opted to provide us with a lower per-installation cost than we've seen in the past.
According to a press release issued this morning, Mac Office 2011 will be available to consumers in three different flavors. Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011, which boasts the core productivity elements of Word, Excel, Powepoint and Messenger for Mac will retail for $119 for a single user license, and $149 for a three license family-edition. Also available will be Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Home and Business, which will ship with Outlook for Mac and set users back $199 for a single license, and $279 for users with two machines. Lastly, the ever popular Academic verison of the venerable suite of programs will be made available to students for $99, provided they purchase it from authorized academic stores, or from Microsoft online. All in all, the folks over at Redmond seem pretty pleased with themselves:
“We develop Office for Mac to give you the tools to create great-looking and compatible documents — with options to pick the right edition for your Mac needs,” said Eric Wilfrid, general manager, Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) at Microsoft Corp. “More than ever before, Office 2011 brings the familiar productivity tools and features of Microsoft Office to a suite of applications that work great on the Mac.”
Oh, and if you've been planning to buy a copy of Microsoft Office 2008 in the near future, here's some great news: if you purchase it between 1 August 2010 and 1 November 2010, you'll be able to upgrade to Office 2011 once it becomes available at no additional cost.
