Mac Users can Enjoy Home & Student Edition of Office Too
At least once a year, we point out the lower-costing, multiple license offering of Microsoft’s Office product. It’s called the Home and Student edition and allows you to install the productivity suite on up to three computers instead of just one. The MSRP is right around $150, but you can often find it for just over half that price, making it a cost-effective way to get Office in your household for several users.
I had no idea that the Microsoft Mac BU also offered a similar package for Mac, so I’m suspecting that others weren’t aware either. Or maybe it’s just me, who knows? I know that everyone loves a good deal, so if you’ve got multiple Macs under your roof, you should be able to find Office 2008 for Mac: Home and Student Edition for under $100. From what I can tell, the prior version was available in a Student and Teacher Edition, so this does look new for the 2008 version. Included in the package is Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage for mail.
People often forget that the other Office licences let you install it on a “mobile PC” as well. So they will quite happily activate on two different machines, with the proviso that if MS finds out you’re not using it on a mobile machine or two different people are using it, they can pull the plug. I keep Office Ultimate on my desktop and my laptop this way.
I wish the Home and Student edition would allow each of the three installs to be on a Mac OR PC for those of us with both platforms in our homes.
The Windows version does not include Outlook. The Mac version does not have scripting support, and the version of Entourage included won’t connect to Exchange.
Just a piece of fair warning: Entourage doesn’t connect to Exchange in the Home Edition and it’s not Automator-scriptable, meaning if you want either of those features you have to throw down for the Standard version which is a bit more expensive and only includes one license.
Yeah, while it’s old news, the bigger deal is that when you go to buy a Mac at the Apple Store and ask for Office, the good sales reps *ask* if you’re going to connect to an Exchange server. If the answer is no, they push you to the cheaper SKU.
They’re actually pretty well-informed, and probably know full well that money you save on Office is money spent on accessories/more RAM/Apple’s own software.