Microsoft Office 2010 Buyers Guide -- Breaking Down the Office 2010 Editions Discussion

Microsoft Office 2010 hits retail stores this month and as usual Microsoft is offering a byzantine selection of Office 2010 Editions to choose from. Which version of Office 2010 is right for you, and which Editions are you even eligible to buy? We break it down in this buyers guide.

Read the full content of this Article: Microsoft Office 2010 Buyers Guide -- Breaking Down the Office 2010 Editions

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[zippo44]

Great breakdown Jay, they really could not have made it more confusing.

One thing that I am even more confused about is licenses. Is there any way for you to add that information? How many licenses each version has, whether there is a difference in license between key/hard media?

This is probably incredibly important to a lot of users in their purchase.

[Kuu]

Well, this will be confusing to explain to people when they start asking which they need. Even I'm still a bit confused over the entire disc/card key thing aside from the fact that no disc = cheaper.

[Huskerz85]

Either dump Publisher down into the Home & Business version, or merge Home & Business with Standard and make the three 'Professional' versions OEM only.....

(will still stick with my version of Professional '07 I got for $80 back in college )

[Jay Garmon]

Sorry if it wasn't clear. The keycard versions come with one license, period. The boxed full version of Professional Academic comes with one license. The boxed full of Home & Business and Professional come with two licenses. The boxed full of Home & Student comes with three licenses. All the OEM stuff is sold on a per-license basis.

[roblen]

I say now is a great time to f**k M$ and their lovely licences.
Install Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS, two linux OS's that are among the most friendly to get your feet wet in a superior OS. If you want windows still around for a certain game you enjoy playing or an application for which there is no alternative DUAL boot; when you install Linux it will recognize that windows is already there & add it to the boot menu. Some CD's such as Ubuntu will have a 'live' option so you can run it without even installing (albeit slower off CD).

Then you'll see how there are 20,000! apps waiting to be installed with a few clicks plus countless others available as source.
Among these are many excellent M$ Office REPLACEMENTS. A big one is OpenOffice.org, (150 million downloads to date) which will probably already be installed. The interface will be very familiar.

With the money you save on apps and virus/malware software (you dont need to run any anti-virus in linux!!) you could buy a new laptop, one with linux even pre-installed! (see Dell).

[Neithan]

Sorry if it wasn't clear. The keycard versions come with one license, period. The boxed full version of Professional Academic comes with one license. The boxed full of Home & Business and Professional come with two licenses. The boxed full of Home & Student comes with three licenses. All the OEM stuff is sold on a per-license basis.

On studentdiscount.com, the Professional Academic for $96.99 comes with 2 installations.

Office Professional 2010 (installs on up to 2 computers) - CX3203

Looking at the bottom of the page, what they are selling seems to be a downloaded version instead of a physical discs.

Then on the Microsoft student discount program

Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010

This one is $79.95. It's stated to be one license in the middle of the page.

I don't know if they are selling the same version with one license that allows two installations or different versions or if studentdiscounts is wrong. Can anyone shed some light on this?