Australian Students Can Get Office at 95% Off Retail

tora201 writes "Microsoft Australia is offering university students in that country Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for just $75 Australian dollars, a 95% discount off the usual retail price. Alternatively students can buy a one year renewable license at just $25, or download a trial version that can be later activated. Eligibility is determined through a valid Australian university e-mail address with payment made via credit card."

Perceived value

[wall0159]

I guess it's all about how people think about that cost. Many people would say "$75! And every one else has to pay hundreds! It's a bargain!"

Whereas I'd say, "it's $75 more than OO, and it doesn't even run natively on my OS - what a piece of crap!!"

What about us?

[AlphaLop]

And where is the discounted version for American students?

I had to pay full price for a copy recently for my wife as it was a requirement of the last class she needs for her first degree.... We are far from rich and the fact that we are trying to get her through college without racking up student loan debt means that this was our "Major" purchase for this half of the year ;)

We use open office at home so it actually caused me physical pain to have to purchase another Microsoft product :)

Discounted software

[edwardpickman]

Funny how often the US gets to bear the brunt of development costs while the rest of the world gets deep discounts. It's not just software but drugs as well. Even Canada gets radically cheaper drug prices than the US. Part of it is government policies but the bulk is corporate america bleeding the US dry then discounting the rest of the world. Interesting that some drugs can be sold for a few dollars a dose at a profit overseas and yet sell for tens of dollars here. Microsoft can count on the US to pay for the development costs so the rest of the world is gravy. Europe doesn't see the software discounts generally but a lot of the world does. I'm sure Microsoft is claiming hundreds of millions to perhaps billions in developing Vista but we pay for that development in higher software prices. In this case we aren't getting much for our money. The added security seems to come with a high anoyance factor and the eye candie we can live without. Direct X10 sounds impressive but do we really need a whole new OS to run it? There are some definate improvements in memory limits and such but we pay for it in radically greater system requirements. The low end computer manufactures are likely going to be stuck with Linux since the system requirements are so high. Ironically that will come back to bite Microsoft because more and more entry level users will become in exposed to Linux. They may be trying to avoid that with the foreign markets because people are going to be less inclined to pay both the high OS and hardware costs. Give the students cheap OSs then hopefully they stay branded to Microsoft.

Re:The first one is free...

[cyclop]

Besides academic papers should be done in TeX

As a molecular biologist working in biophysics, this is sometimes slightly difficult. I know that Nature at least doesn't like to receive LaTeX written papers, and a significant number of molecular biology journals want .doc output. Not nice.

Re:But the sad thing is...

[a.ameri]

Am I the only one around here who actually likes the ribbon interface?

First of all, I am a student in Australia, and right now I am downloading Office 2007 Ultimate after shelving out $75 of my hard earned cash. This I think, is the first time I am directly paying for software in my life, and I guess it's mainly because of how impressed I have become of Office 2007's interface. I had been using a pirated copy of Enterprise Edition for the past couple of weeks, but after seeing this offer, I realised that having a legitimate copy which can easily be validated and updated is worth $75.

I have used every version of Office since Office 97, and I have also used every version of OOo since it was Staroffice 5.x. Even after all these years, I always found myself looking for a specific option, and jumping from menu to the other menu. Let's face it, there is absolutely no logic why many of these items are where they are. It's just that we have become so accustomed with the interface that we have memorised where they are, and hence are able to use the product. Have you ever looked at a person who has never used any office product, trying to make sense out of Office? I have (my mother), and let me tell you that it is hugely frustrating, to say the least.

Ribbons just make the whole problem disappear. The whole functionality is now right in your face, and they have designed it in a way which takes less screen real space than all those menus and toolbars did. The whole interface is now more intuitive, and everything seems in its place. Now, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy here, but realistically, ribbons are a UI improvement over menus and toolbars. It took me perhaps 2-3 days to get accustomed to it, but after that I never looked back.

I agree that for 90% of the time, OOo is fine feature-wise, and does the job. However in the Real World (TM), people ask that you hand in your CV in "word format", and they don't even accept PDFs (don't ask me why). I am afraid I simply can't trust OOo's "save as MS Word" feature, for files which are critical to me. Not to mention that there are those of us who really need the extra functionality MS Office provides. It's not just Office's own functionality either, there are various 3rd party products that only integrate with MS Office, e.g., here in the University of Melbourne, we use a program called End Note X to manage our bibliographies and references when writing articles. Guess what word processing program it integrated with? (hint: not OOo). Now I myself probably won't trust Word (or any WYSIWYG program for that matter) for writing 100+ pages (I used LaTex for writing my Master's thesis), but LaTex is simply not an option for 99% of the population who have been brought up in a WYSIWYG world.

To say that all those paying for MS Office are ignorants who are not aware of alternatives is stupid. Ribbon is a very fine UI evolution, and I strongly suspect that in a couple of years time, all document generating programs will use the same interface. Not withstanding the technical superiority of MS Office over all other office suits at this time, it should also be noted that many of us have to use Office to ensure document compatibility with everyone else, as well as compatibility with a large number of 3rd party products which we rely on for our day to day life.

Now, I should probably get back to my thesis again, in LaTex...