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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
Get Mac Office for $50 (as, ahem, a 'student')

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Friday, August 15, 2003
TalkBack!Add your opinion
Have you heard the news? Macintosh users can now buy Microsoft Office for $50.

Of course, there are a couple catches. First, you have to qualify for the new Office v. X for Mac Student and Teacher Edition to get the discount.

Second, you actually pay $149 for a copy that is legal to use on up to three computers, which works out to about $50 per machine. (By comparison, the new $499 Office v. X Professional and $399 Standard Editions can only be installed on one computer.)

The reviews are in
ZDNet reviewers gave good marks to the recent versions of Office for both Mac and Windows, though they say Office 11 is best suited for corporate users.

SINCE MICROSOFT says it's making almost no attempt to check on whether buyers are really students or not, this new pricing strategy seems more a winking reaction to reality (and a way to make Office affordable for home users) than an attempt to create a new class of lawbreakers.

What does it take to qualify for the low-cost Office?

According to Microsoft, "To license Office v. X for Mac Student and Teacher Edition, you must be a Qualified Educational User or the parent or guardian of a Qualified Educational User who is a minor. Qualified Educational Users include: Full or part-time students; Home-schooled students; and Full or part-time faculty or staff of an accredited educational institution."

It turns out that I--by virtue of the EMT class I am taking at a local college this fall--qualify as a part-time student. Given what it costs to enroll in many classes, a scrupulously honest person could sign up for a class or two with the $250 savings he'd get from buying the education edition instead of the standard edition.

Microsoft will be selling the education edition everywhere, not just at college bookstores, where student ID cards are generally checked. So, if you decide to buy it, Microsoft won't be checking on whether you really are  a student. At the same time, Microsoft's lawyers will track down businesses that attempt to buy large numbers of copies of the education edition.

This isn't Microsoft's first Student and Teacher Edition of Office. There's a Windows version that sells for about $130 and which, I believe, can be installed on three machines as well.

However, whereas the standard Office for Mac allows only a single installation (as noted earlier), the standard Office for Windows allows two installations per package, intended for a user's desktop and laptop systems.

AS A STUDENT of what I'll call "the Microsoft condition," it's fun to watch the giant try to solve one problem without causing something worse. This is especially acute when Microsoft is trying to sell the same software to businesses and consumers.

What used to happen is people would copy their legal versions of Office, not only around the office but at home as well. That worked well in making Office the de facto standard productivity suite. But it also meant that for every legal copy of Office there were likely to be several illegal copies as well.

Microsoft decided to do something about this illegal copying with software activation, which prevents non-activated versions of the app from operating after about a month (you can activate your software over the Internet or by telephone using a software activation code). Activation is used for both Windows XP and Office. On Macintosh, Microsoft uses a common Mac copy protection method that prevents two pieces of software with the same serial number from operating at the same time on a given network.

Activation presumably reduced business piracy, but also impacted home users, because they could no longer bring home the version of Office they used at work and install it on their home machine. Yes, there was (and is) a version of the low-priced Works suite that includes a full copy of Word, but that never really caught on.

INSTEAD, people wanted a full version of Office on their home computers, but didn't want to spend the $400 it would cost to buy one. Copying was pretty much out of the question because of the new anti-piracy protection. So, enter the education editions. These essentially solve the problem of how you can sell the same product to businesses and individuals at significantly different prices.

The education editions are a good deal for consumers, though I won't touch the question of whether business sales should be used to subsidize sales to individuals. I must admit I am not wild about a plan that tacitly asks people to pretend to be students and teachers when they aren't. I also wonder how many non-students will pay $399 for the standard edition just to be "on the right side" of Microsoft's licensing agreements. That never, after all, stopped people from making copies of business software for home use.

But I am always happy when Microsoft promotes education, even if what many "students" learn will be how to beat the system--with Microsoft's winking assent.

What do you think of Microsoft's pricing policies for Office? Do you think it's right or wrong? Can you think of a better way to deal with the issue? TalkBack to me!

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