back to article Microsoft guns for 2-for-1 sales with 'pre-installed' Office 2010 deal

Microsoft has finally dished up UK prices for its forthcoming Office 2010 suite. The software vendor revealed US prices in January, and at the same time confirmed that customers who bought Office 2010 pre-installed by OEMs rather than purchasing an off-the-shelf copy stood to save a few bucks to boot. Microsoft will be …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds to me...

    ...like someone is going to be "taking advantage" of someone alright. Not surprisingly, at £90 a pop for a piece of office software, it'll be the customers walking away with a sore bum from this one.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      but but but

      Office 2010 does SO much more than Office 2003, like.... ummm.

      But you can't deny it comes with some really shite^W great programs. Like full-fat Outlook. Yeah, now the home user can enjoy the feeling of dull corporate servitude right in their own home. Don't forget to schedule in some time for "boredom" in your Outlook calendar!

      How about that MS Publisher? Take a trip back to 1998 with thousands of butt-ugly leaflet and flyer templates right at your finger tips. Birthday party coming up? Don't forget to show your loved one you care with a piece of A4 copier paper folded in half twice. Publisher will even show you how to make it.

      And don't forget to set up a home inventory system using MS Access, so that you're never more than 48 clicks away from the data you need, such as "how many toilet rolls do I have left?".

      And what home user wouldn't be impressed by InfoPath and OneNote? Apparently corporate users love them for doing... whatever it is they do... and that's good enough reason to waste another 600MB of anyone's disk space, right?

  2. Harry
    Go

    Wouldn't a supplier do MUCH better ,..

    ... to preinstall Open Office ?

    Apart from the fact that it needn't cost either them or the customer anything, they would be helping to encourage the use of genuine open standards.

    1. jackharrer

      Fricking title here

      "Apart from the fact that it needn't cost either them or the customer anything"

      As you noticed it will not cost them anything to install OO, but it will also not bring them some $$ from MSFT for installing their trialware... Guess who pays for that?

    2. RISC OS
      WTF?

      I would happly pay for MS office

      As i need to open and finish things from work. I tried with OOo to open a powerpoint file. OOo messed up just showing a table... without any formatting or anything. A one page ppt with a table.

      OOo may be great for nerds who only "know" people via "social" networking sites who becuase of their nerdy status also use OOo, but in the real world where friends aren't called "IvorBiggen" und "The Hostile" OOo just won't do. My real workd friends like "Jon" or "Sascha" don't use OOo becuase they have never heard of it. Also my wife will want to know why her Dissertations are all messed up... she won't buy the "ms is evil line" or the "OOo is free... as in beer line".

      Maybe if your a nerd it's easy to convert the 6 people in your address book to OOo, but I have a hundred or so friends that send me office data so I shall stick to MS.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Down

        lots of people are happy to pay

        but the question is, are you happy to pay AGAIN for 'new all singing' office2010. I'm guessing that you and you many friends couldn't even name the new features - let alone use them. I'm happy with office 2000 - (don't get me started on the MANDATORY f**king ribbon instead of menus we have all used for years).

        If you want to pay again for these 'advances' then fine. But don't assume the only option is OO - my option is stick to the stuff that works and that I can use (and it is MS).

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        lol

        You have 100 friends who send you their office work for you to finish at home.... and OO users are the nerds?

      3. Jon 52

        then work should pay

        If you need office to finish things from work then either work should pay for the license to let you work from home, or you are wastingtime on a IT related website when you should be working...

  3. Daniel Owen 1

    license difference

    It's important to remember that if you want to "get the most" from your license that the retail license can legally be moved from machine to machine when you upgrade hardware but the OEM copies are tied to the box. If you are one of those people who likes to upgrade hardware every couple of years or who buys crap hardware that breaks every couple of years shrink wrapped copies are cheaper.

    1. A J Stiles
      Pirate

      Not in Europe

      Not in Europe, it doesn't work like that.

      We have this little thing called Exhaustion of Rights to prevent exactly this sort of abuse. Whether you received an OEM copy or a retail copy, the licence is equally transferrable.

  4. Natalie Gritpants
    Thumb Up

    Note to self

    Must show these prices to the other half the next time I get a whinge about openoffice not being like Word.

  5. Roger Kynaston
    FAIL

    £90 - £400 pelagic cephalopods

    I'll stick with Open Orifice with it's faults.

  6. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Apples and oranges

    For most customers, software licenses are a secret to be sprung on them after the have been separated from there cash. The pre-installed version of MS Office is probably licensed for one computer and is not transferable. The boxed version has some remote chance of being licensed for one computer at a time - it may be possible to remove it and install on a new computer.

    There are still enough geriatric PHBs too set in there ways to understand there are alternatives to MS office. Send them round the world on business trips and make them fill out expenses forms until the get a heart attack. Then you can upgrade to standards compliant software. Just imagine trying to explain to your grandchildren that MS Word could not reliably understand documents written by a different version of MS Word.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Unbundle Windows!

    Although this is an "offer" for people who have just bought a computer (bundled with Windows - not that most people have a choice), how about the regulators get round to dealing with the anticompetitive/illegal bundling of Windows with most computers sold through retail channels?

  8. Tristan Young

    How is that a deal?

    I wouldn't buy Microsoft Office if it was free.

    After using and promoting OpenOffice for years, I can't imagine ever switching back to Microsoft Office.

    What shall I ever do if I switch jobs and they force me to suffer with Microsoft Office? Hopefully they'll let me bring my own computer to use OpenOffice.

  9. Lewis Mettler 1
    Stop

    price reduction vs market share

    A 10% drop in price is the same to stockholders as a 10% drop in marketshare.

    So it is interesting to see Microsoft try all kinds of tricks and special deals (such as educational discounts, etc) in order to maintain a market share position.

    Microsoft shareholders lose either way. Of course Microsoft does not want any stupid customers to find out about OO or cloud based alternatives. So it is not a surprise to see Microsoft offer lower prices.

    But, as long as Microsoft's office products are not available for Linux they do not even qualify.

  10. spegru
    FAIL

    possible unwanted (by msft) side effect

    If MSFT starts undermining it's boxed software retail channels it's only a matter of time before they fight back and start pushing customers to free alternatives (OOO) so that they can compete

  11. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    OO

    @RISC OS, I surely wouldn't use OpenOffice if it mangled my files either. But, your results aren't typical, and I don't think it's fair to say it's not useful because it mangled 1 file. My anecdote is actually the opposite -- I had Office 2003 absolutely mangling some Office97 files (turning bullet points into upside down question marks and such) while OpenOffice opened them fine. The problem a lot of people seem to have is, Office does not contain page layout software, or a professional typesetting system. But people try to use it as one. These people will complain when OpenOffice does change formatting on some documents, but I've seen going from one version of Office to the next change formatting at least as much (no complaints then!), and even just changing printer models change formatting (I suppose due to the margins changing.)

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anti-trust

    Break them up. And Google too. And Comcast, AT&T, and Well's Fargo, WaMu...

  13. Geoff Smith
    Linux

    Exchange rates?

    Could someone from M$ explain why all of M$ suggested retail prices here in the US contain the same numerical values as their UK prices? The only difference that I can see, is that instead of a dollar sign prefix, all of their UK prices are prefixed with the UK's pound sign. So why is M$ Office for students priced at $109.-, but the UK price is 109 pounds? (Sorry, this is typed on a US keyboard.)

    Last time I checked, the exchange rate would make the UK price 1.75x to 2x the US price.

    M$ = wankers.

    El Reg, We need a frying egg icon, because just like crack, With Windows, users become lusers.

  14. Jay 2
    WTF?

    When Office doesn't talk to Office, but OpenOffice does

    I had some spreadsheets created in Excel (Office 2003 on PC). They worked fine when I used a little app to upload them to a remote MySQL server. Several years on I migrated to Mac. So I fire up Excel (Office:Mac 2008) and make my changes, then have to fire up XP in a VM as app in Win only and I haven't found a suitable Mac replacement. Something isn't quite right, and the upload fails miserably. So after messing about I take a copy of the original spreadsheet from the PC, edit in OpenOffice and upload... no problems at all.

  15. A J Stiles
    Gates Horns

    Don't forget

    The greatest threat to the Microsoft Office revenue stream is old, yet perfectly adequate (for their own users' needs) versions of Microsoft Office.

    Microsoft may appear to be taking a small loss by giving away the latest version; but they will end up making it all back, by selling copies to all the people who find they can't open their contacts' documents saved with the newest Office.

  16. Eddie Johnson
    Troll

    You Get What You Pay For

    OEM software versions are no great value. Typically you'll find that its unsupported ("support for this OEM product is provided by your PC manufacturer." Good luck!), non-upgradeable, often limited in features, and just a general pain in the ass all around. Oh, and when your HDD fails good luck since you received no media or proof of purchase.

    That said, if you know you won't require support and make sure you have good backup and recovery plans it may be worth it, but just barely.

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