As promised, the Microsoft MacBU team has released some more details about the coming Office 2008 for Mac. Although the next version of Office for Mac won't be available until January 15, 2008, Microsoft has announced pricing and package options.
Office 2008 for Mac will come in three flavors. The standard version, called simply, Office 2008 for Mac, includes PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Entourage and will retail for $400.
There will also be a Special Media Edition which includes the above apps plus Expression Media, a new digital media cataloguing program based on the iView media management suite which Microsoft acquired last year. Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition will retail for $500.
Perhaps the most interesting edition is the Home and Student version, which includes all the apps of the standard edition, but lacks the ability to connect to Exchange Servers, as well as some bundled Automator actions. The Home and Student edition will retail for the (relative) bargain price of $150, which leads to the inevitable question — does Microsoft really think Exchange Server access is worth $250?
Another notable advantage of the Home and Student version is that the licensing agreement allows you to install Office on up to three different Macs.
As part of the pricing announcement, Microsoft also said that purchases of Office 2004 (the currently shipping edition of Office for Mac) made between now and March 15, will be eligible for a free upgrade to the comparable version of Office 2008. You'll have to cover the shipping and handling — said to be around $10 — but there's no additional upgrade charge.
Rather disappointingly Microsoft has decided not to offer a large scale Office for Mac beta program. Instead all preliminary testing will be handled privately by a select group of Microsoft beta testers.
All versions of Office 2008 for Mac will support the new OOXML file format and are Universal applications.
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