Latest News: Office 2007 will include OneNote (kind of)
The current beta version of Office is called Office 12. Today, Microsoft officially released price specification as well as the name of the new office. It will be called Office 2007. We will use both Office 2007 and Office 12 to refer to the same product. OneNote will not be part of the standard Office suite because like Chris Prately said on his blog that including OneNote in the standard suite would raise the price. Also, they can’t just include OneNote without raising the price because…well…they want to make money.
However, that is not the big news. The Student and Teacher edition of Office will now be called the Home and Student edition and it can be bought by anyone. This version will have OneNote! OneNote will replace Outlook in this edition.
I think this is a great move by Microsoft. For the average home and student user of Office, Outlook is the least used product compared to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Increasing, most people’s e-mails are being kept online using Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, G-Mail, etc. Also, Yahoo and Microsoft are beta testing a major overhaul of their web e-mail service. The new service blends the gap between an e-mail application like Outlook and a web e-mail service like Hotmail. In fact, the beta versions are very powerful and look very similar to Outlook.
Chris Prately has written about Microsoft’s desire to increase OneNote’s market share. OneNote is a great application for home and student users alike and this will help propel it to the mainstream. Hopefully, it will also diminish the myth about OneNote (Chris Prately termed the misconception that OneNote is only for Tablet PCs as the myth).
The Student and Teacher edition is the most popular version of Office because it is the cheapest and includes the big four. Although, technically it is meant only for students and teachers and buyers are supposed to show a valid education id, retailers are very relaxed and Microsoft has made a lot of money from it. By changing the name of the product, Microsoft is just accepting reality and taking steps to make sure things stay the same. Here are the prices for all the home version of Office.
Office 2007 Standard Edition $399
Office 2007 Professional Edition $499
Office 2007 Home and Student Edition $149 —- Includes OneNote!!!!
Source: News.com
