September 13th, 2007
Microsoft offers the ultimate (Office) steal
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This really is a steal! Starting today, students can purchase Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95 in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. On September 20th the promotion expands to Spain, Italy, and France. You can find the full details here:
To be eligible, you must:
- Hold a valid email address at a U.S. educational institution ending in .edu (for example, leina@contoso.university.edu) AND
- Be actively enrolled with at least 0.5 course load.
Also, you must be able to provide proof of enrollment status (ie, student card) upon request by Microsoft. If you are unable to provide proof of enrollment, you will be required to pay the full retail price of Office Ultimate 2007 (approximate ERP $679USD).
Office Ultimate includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and Infopath.
In addition, Microsoft is running a blogging contest. You must:
Answer the Contest question, “How do you plan to use the Office Ultimate 2007 release to excel in your academic studies?” with respect to at least three (3) separate Microsoft Office system applications (e.g., Word 2007, One Note 2007, Groove 2007, etc.).
You could win up to $3000 (for a Spring Break getaway), a $1000 Amex gift card, or an Xbox 360 Elite.
We Say: the bad part is - you’re still stuck with the Ribbon interface. 
jesus says:
still sucks, even for $60.
I’ll stick with iLife ‘08 (retails for $79), and office 2003 inside parallels for MS Access and friends.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Jason says:
No mention of any elegebility outside the US. In fact you have to have a US .edu email address.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:36 am
John Corliss says:
I only have one thing to say:
http:\\www.openoffice.org
I wouldn’t use MS Office if they held a loaded gun to my head.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:19 am
BVH says:
You guys are nuts. Office 2007 far better then 2003 and the ribbon (if you take a little time and learn it) is a much better interface system then the 100’s of menus stacked all over each other.
Open Office lacks a lot of polish and feels like Word Perfect which is as bad as something feeling like Lotus Notes… Hmm.. You know..
September 14th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
John Corliss says:
I have one other thing to say:
“Reveal Codes”
and MS Office doesn’t have it.
September 15th, 2007 at 2:04 am