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Office Ultimate Discount Available for Students

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

September 12, 2007, 4:12 PM

Microsoft is using the back-to-school season as the backdrop for its latest promotion to increase sales of its Office 2007 productivity suite. Beginning today in the US, Canada, and UK, and beginning September 20 in Spain, Italy, and France the company is offering students the chance to purchase Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95 USD. The promotion runs through April 30, 2008.

Office Ultimate includes nine applications from the suite including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and Infopath. Microsoft had run a pilot program of the offering in Australia which received good results. "We're listening to students who have told us they need Microsoft Office for their studies and want more flexible ways to get the latest version," said Alan Yates, general manager of Worldwide Education at Microsoft. More information on the offering can be found on the Microsoft website.

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By batteryfast

posted Nov 10, 2008 - 11:43 PM

Office Ultimate includes nine applications from the suite including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and Infopath. Microsoft had run a pilot program of the offering in Australia which received good results. "We're listening to students who have told us they need Microsoft Office for their studies and want more flexible ways acer btp-620 battery acer travelmate 620 battery acer travelmate 630 battery to get the latest version," said Alan Yates, general manager of Worldwide Education at Microsoft. More information on the offering can be found on the Microsoft website.

Score: 0

By KSzostek

posted Sep 14, 2007 - 7:43 PM

Well I got mine. What a great thing to do for students. As for the ribbon use it and you will like it alot.

WOW the MS Fanboys were probably the first to buy it.

You would have to be an idiot not to buy this if you qualify at this price.

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Sep 16, 2007 - 11:30 AM

Yup, I'll be buying mine today!

Score: 0

By pitdingo

posted Sep 14, 2007 - 7:09 AM

Why pay anything for this when you can get Open Office for free? Not to mention, it supports the ISO standard ODF.

http://www.openoffice.org

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 14, 2007 - 9:27 AM

You mean it partially supports the incomplete ODF standard? Sure. :)

Score: 0

By ehn

posted Sep 14, 2007 - 1:54 AM

Arrgh! My college doesn't provide students with email addresses.

Is there any other way we can provide proof of enrollment other than a .edu email address?

Score: 0

By Neoprimal

posted Sep 15, 2007 - 5:48 AM

I don't know how you'd start the process of buying it, but perhaps you can contact the company and prove you're a student? I know that a part of the terms are that they'll contact you to check, so I don't know.

Score: 0

By zridling

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 9:26 PM

In every way, Offie 2007 has failed — in sales, in performance, with students (the citation feature will truly destroy your research papers, test it and see), and of course, that unbelievably bad file format called MS-OOXML.

If you still want yet another Microsoft mistake, why pay? A newsgroup is offering a hacked version of it already.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 14, 2007 - 9:26 AM

It's been on the usenet since before it was released to consumers, but that is another issue all together.

The rest is purely subjective. We'll be switching to '07 here by end of 1st Q. '08. We've tested it with all of our current software, systems, and procedures, as well as for compatibility with our partners and clients.

We've been using 2000 since it's release and skipped '03 (other than Outlook) with this upgrade in mind.

Score: 0

By Tyrok

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 11:24 AM

Who thinks they are doing this because Office 2007 contains their next generation proprietary "Open XML" format? Furthermore, who thinks they are pushing this cheap deal because people find that the new ribbon crap is annoying along with the 100s of small changes they made to the default format of a document (font style, font size, margins, line spacing). I actually praise that they strayed away from the 1.25" left/right margins and went to the recognized standard of 1". But Calabri, 11pt font? Wtf is that?

I guess if you make Office cheaper more people will buy it and in turn Office 2007 with it's somewhat unique Ribbon interface will be used more often. This will also help promote the Open XML format, so it will win vs the OpenDocument format.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 12:05 PM

Who thinks they are doing this because Office 2007 contains their next generation proprietary "Open XML" format?

The tinfoil hat crowd.

Furthermore, who thinks they are pushing this cheap deal because people find that the new ribbon crap is annoying along with the 100s of small changes they made to the default format of a document (font style, font size, margins, line spacing).

The folks who unreasonably fear change. Many of the folks, even on this site, who have used Office 2007 have praised the ribbon once they have gotten used to it.

This will also help promote the Open XML format, so it will win vs the OpenDocument format.

...because we all know the certification is run by a poll of the majority of users...

/sarcasm

Score: 0

By marrix

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 7:37 AM

I live in OZ, and have been using this version on my personal notebook. Shelf price AUD299.00, offered cash to the vendor Harris Technology, got it for AUD250.00.
Good deal indeed!

Score: 0

By supermanforever

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 9:11 AM

http://apcmag.com/5499/o...australian_uni_students

Do you know the MS office offer was actually A$75?

Score: 0

By marrix

posted Sep 15, 2007 - 6:49 AM

Super,
Your comments well noted, however as a 53y/o SME owner I do not qualify. This price was much better than either paying the RRP of AUD1,175.00, and was AUD150.00 cheaper than ordering Pro bundled on my new Dell XPS M1330.
Cheers mate,

Score: 0

By kappen

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 1:05 AM

Something odd about this is the count down on the website keeps resetting. so either in typical MS fasion they have a bug or its a gimick.

Score: 0

By dougau

edited Sep 12, 2007 - 8:11 PM

http://www.theultimatesteal.com/ is referred to in the press release. Both that one and the one in the betanews artical seem to go to the same IP Address 209.162.191.152 so although the domain is registered as:

Registrant:
Mr. Youth, LLC
298 Fifth Ave
5th Floor
New York, New York 10001
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: THEULTIMATESTEAL.COM
Created on: 03-Jul-07
Expires on: 03-Jul-09
Last Updated on: 03-Jul-07

Administrative Contact:
Director, Interactive interactive@mryouth.com
Mr. Youth, LLC
298 Fifth Ave
5th Floor
New York, New York 10001
United States
(212) 481-0216

Technical Contact:
Director, Interactive interactive@mryouth.com
Mr. Youth, LLC
298 Fifth Ave
5th Floor
New York, New York 10001
United States
(212) 481-0216

Domain servers in listed order:
NS57.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS58.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

I am inclined to say its real because it is linked directly from the press release. http://www.microsoft.com...ss_fdn=Press%20Releases

And a Google search shows Mr. Youth LLC to be a marketing company, which is probably doing the marketing for Microsoft.

Still I wouldn't want to give a marketing company my primary email address.

Score: 0

By sahaskatta

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:30 PM

THAT IS NOT A MICROSOFT WEBSITE.
do not give your information to them
the domain is registered by a guy named mr youth in new york, new york. this doesn't look like it has any real affiliation with microsoft. Beta news, please provide some info to validate this site. I'll be disappointed if this is a scam, you guys are usually good about this so hopefully i am wrong.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:50 PM

lol.... clever. Got a few of the top tech sites, also.

Score: 0

By hordanes

edited Sep 12, 2007 - 6:36 PM

OK so this could be a fake..... but here is the microsoft press release

http://www.microsoft.com...ss_fdn=Press%20Releases

Score: 0

By philosopher_dog

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:21 PM

Wise idea to price the product so that students can actually afford it. If you don't want them to steal it, then consider a fair price scheme to make it not worth the trouble.

Score: 0

By ConceptJunkie

posted Sep 13, 2007 - 11:20 AM

I'd rather they keep it expensive so students will choose better software. This only promotes the total monopoly of Office in business, and as far as I'm concerned Word is an abomination of an application. We'd be better off if people realized there are better alternatives. OpenOffice isn't perfect, but in my experience, it's much easier to use. Of course, my personal choice for word processing is using mark-up like ReStructured Text.

Plus, Microsoft as a whole is a danger to Free Software and business in general.

Score: 0

By billweh

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:10 PM

Anyone know where you can go to actually get the product? You follow the link above and the timer finally ran out - but it takes you know where and none of the links do anything.

The academic stores still show Ultimate at $400. A little over the $59 I was expecting. :)

Score: 0

By eoswald

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:30 PM

Yeah, from our research I believe they want to attempt to verify you're actually a college student before giving you the price. Thus, you'd probably have to respond to an e-mail to an .edu e-mail or something to that sort.

Details were a little vague from the press materials on the process, so if anybody actually goes through with it, let us know what you find out.

Score: 0

By PatrynXX

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 7:22 PM

well my college doesn't use an .edu address. always run into probs with that. however theultimatesteal.com shows up under microsoft.com as well

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:26 PM

I would assume the details are emailed to you once available...like it says on the website?

Score: 0

By Paul Skinner

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 4:58 PM

That's a wonderful idea.

The one small problem is that students (being the tight buggers they are) can get it for free in torrent form...

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 12, 2007 - 5:24 PM

...and whine about how unfair the world is when the RIAA or MPAA go after them for downloading songs and movies as well.

I mean, if pirating software is "ok"...

Score: 0

By Paul Skinner

posted Sep 14, 2007 - 3:47 AM

Heh. True.

Score: 0

By Keith.

edited Sep 13, 2007 - 10:57 AM

There are some details here

http://store.digitalrive...mp;productID=78619300#t

Or here

http://www.theultimatesteal.com/home.asp

You need to click get it now, then offer conditions, then full terms and conditions to get to Microsoft

I pasted the link but it borks for some reason

Score: 0

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