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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Microsoft slims down Mac Office choices with Business Edition


Microsoft is streamlining its Mac Office offerings by introducing a Business Edition and getting rid of two other editions of Office 2008. The company now offers Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition and Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student, with the business version going for $399.95 (or $239.95 for an upgrade).

The Mac Business Unit (Mac BU) announced the change on its blog today, saying that it was made to help simplify offerings and make it easier for customers to decide what's best for them. Previously, the Mac BU offered three versions of Office 2008: Office 2008 for Mac, Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition, and Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition. Needless to say, by the titles alone, those products are hard to differentiate—how do I know whether I just want regular Office 2008 for Mac, or Home and Student edition? What's the deal with Special Media Edition?

According to the Mac BU, the Business Edition of Office 2008 has all the standard applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, all SP2), as well as "new tools to provide a more complete productivity package for the enterprise." Those include Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition, Document Connection for Mac, and numerous Extras (such as templates, clip art, and lynda.com training). The blog post doesn't specifically talk about the Home & Student edition, so we assume it's the same package that Microsoft offered previously—it contains all the main applications, minus the Exchange and Automator support that comes with the regular version of Entourage for $149.95.

Though we're sure there are some users who will mourn the passing of the Special Media edition—a version that came with Microsoft Expression Media, a digital asset management suite that let users users import, annotate, organize, archive, search, and distribute their media files. However, it's clear that its inclusion in the lineup was just confusing users, and likely wasn't selling all that well at $499.95 anyway. With just two clearly named options, it's much easier for users to decide what version they need and get on with the productivity.

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