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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.

The CBC published an article yesterday about a mother in British Columbia, who’s Rogers account was charged 0.15$ per incoming text message. Although her contract states that all text messages are free, Rogers, implemented the charge on incoming text messages in July of this year.

According to the article “Her 16-year-old daughter sent and received close to 6,000 texts in one month — that’s 200 per day — to and from those numbers.” Let me do some quick math on that… 200 times 0.15… carry the 1…   $30.00 ?!?!?!

That’s just for one of her 3 kids, and not including her own incoming texts. As much as Canadian wireless companies are spending on advertising and making off their clients. You would think that they would inform their customers about upcoming changes to plans. A little fair warning would give people time to adjust their texting habits. While the additional charges are still ridiculous, being up front about them would show some respect for their clients, and go a long way in my eyes for being a company that operates ethically.

You can read the full CBC article here