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Microsoft announced on it’s pricing for the Office 2010 suites on the Office Development Group blog on Monday. There will be four different versions this time around (Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and Professional Academic), and two different prices depending on how you want to get the software. There will be a boxed version of the software that will include the installation CD and license, and there will be the alternative Product Key Card version. The Product Key Card version is just a small plastic card (credit card size) with a product key sticker on it. The software will come on new systems pre-installed with the Office starter/trial. For anyone that has an OEM version of Office 2007, you will most likely be familiar with the Product Key Card.

The Home and Student will have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Home and Business adds Outlook to the software. Professional and Professional Academic will be the full suite containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher and Access.

Home and  Student will cost $149 for the boxed version and $119 for the Product Key Card version. The boxed version can be installed on up to 3 PC’s. Home and Business will run $279/$199, Professional $499/$349. Both of which (boxed version) can be installed on 2 PC’s. Professional Academic will go for $99 and will only be available in boxed form and only to students, teachers, and academic faculty. The Product Key Card versions and Professional Academic version only allow for a single installation.

I’ve been playing with the beta version of Office 2010 for the past week, and I can’t really see all that much functionally, that they’ve changed from Office 2007. There are some nice additions though. The “minimize ribbon” button/widget, the “Background Removal Tool” and a 5:1 contrast ratio added into the silver theme. They also did away with the Office 2007 Button, and replaced it with a ribbon tab. Nifty, but hardly a reason to upgrade from 2007.

That’s something else they did away with. There is no upgrade option from previous versions of Office. So, for most people, that will mean having to buy the full boxed version of the software.

Something interesting to note, was that they mentioned that “Office Home and Student was one of Amazon.com’s top 3 Hot Holiday Bestseller software products in 2009.”. That just points out the amount of people that most likely won’t be buying the 2010 version.

Well, I’ve been messing with Windows 7 Beta (build 7100) for the past month or two, and I have to say, I’m actually impressed. I know this is not what was released to the OEM’s last week, and is still only the Beta version. I expect that the release will have much more compatibility for devices and software than what I’m currently using.

Finally, Microsoft has gotten their act together and taken a good look at the market and taken it into consideration. For years people have been staving off Windows Vista, due to it’s lack of compatibility, it’s awkwardness of it’s interface, and annoying UAC (user account control). While Windows 7 looks, visually very similar to Vista, they function very differently in key spots.

The first thing I noticed with Windows 7 was it’s taskbar, which is now called the “superbar”.  In previous versions of the taskbar, if you had a lot of windows open and you had it set to “group similar taskbar buttons”, all you got was a text description of what you had open. Niffty, but lacking a bit of functionality. If you were like me, and didn’t like the that type of stacking, your task bar would fill up until you had so much in there you would have to increase the height of your taskbar to accommodate everything or have to deal with scrolling through your taskbar via the little arrows that would appear on the right hand side. They’ve really put a lot of thought into it this time. But hey, a picture says a 1000 words, right? Video says even more.

For the past few months I’ve been monitoring peoples reactions to Google’s announcement that they will be releasing an operating system next year, “Chrome OS”. Partnered with some of the industry’s heavyweights such as Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. This is not an endeavor they are taking lightly.

According to their blog, here.
“Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” . Now as far as I know, that’s most of the world’s population, that owns a computer built in the last 10 – 15 years.

This OS is reportedly to be optimized for the cloud. With the convergence of their other projects, and people’s changing views on what “cloud computing” is. It may possibly put them at the forefront of (what I belive is going to be) the next OS race.

The world is going mobile and Apple and Google are looking like the two big heavy weights in the battle. Microsoft, as always, may be keeping things under wraps for now, and may end up being a surprize contender. But, as it stands, they have only really poked at it. This late in the game, Microsoft is at a significant disadvantage. If they are depending on the release of Windows 7 to carry them through, till they get their market research in order, it may be too late. At this point they are relying on people not giving up their conventional desktops and laptops in lieu of net books, iPhones, and Internet connected smartphones.

Chrome OS, combined with the more open version of Android may pose a serious threat to Microsoft’s offerings. Add in Apple’s, making their moblie platform open for development, we may see a major shift in the market.

Just food for thought…

Well, I guess Microsoft fall guilty of piracy (of sorts).

“Canadian company i4i has won a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. that will see the major software maker pay the Toronto, ON-based firm $200 million.”

The full artile is here.