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And the prices $$$:
Microsoft Reveals Office 2003 Prices, Release
Updated productivity suite will ship October 21 priced at $499 for Pro Edition.
Yardena Arar, PCWorld.com
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Microsoft will formally launch its massive Office 2003 collection of productivity apps--now billed as the Office System--on October 21, slightly later than the originally anticipated summer release.
Along with announcing the release date, Microsoft is revealing prices for the entire Office 2003 lineup, including four editions of the Office suite, more than a dozen stand-alone applications, and various servers that work with Office products.
Price Parade
Office Professional Edition 2003, the top-of-the-line retail package that includes Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, and the new Business Contact Manager for Outlook, will go for $499--$100 cheaper than the launch price (and equal to the current price) of the comparable Office XP edition. Owners of Office 97 or later versions of the suite will qualify for an upgrade price of $329.
The new Office Small Business Edition 2003, which includes all of the apps in Professional except for Access, will go for $449, with an upgrade price of $279.
Office Standard Edition 2003, consisting of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, is priced at $399, with a $239 upgrade. And Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003, which is the same as Standard Edition but is available only to the education market, will go for $149, with no upgrade price available.
Microsoft is not announcing prices for two other versions of the suite, Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003 and Office Basic Edition 2003, which will not be sold in retail outlets. Professional Enterprise, which will be available only to volume licensees such as businesses and academic institutions, will include everything in the retail Professional edition plus Microsoft's new XML creation application, InfoPath.
Basic Edition 2003, consisting of Word, Excel, and Outlook, will be available only with the purchase of a new PC.
Application Prices
Stand-alone Office 2003 applications will also cost about $100 less than their Office XP counterparts did at launch, and the same as they have since Microsoft cut all Office XP prices in May. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access will each debut priced at $229, with upgrade versions available for $109.
Outlook 2003, the application that got the most thorough makeover, will cost $109, but therea??s no discount for upgraders.
Publisher 2003 will go for $169, but will ship with a $70 mail-in rebate coupon for upgraders. Microsoft will also offer Publisher 2003 bundled with Digital Image Pro image editing software for $209.
Other members of the Office 2003 family include FrontPage ($199, $109 upgrade price); Visio Standard ($199, $100 upgrade price); Visio Professional ($499, $249 upgrade); Project Standard ($599, $349 upgrade); and Project Professional ($999, $499 upgrade).
Microsoft had previously announced pricing for the Project line at a recent preview.
InfoPath will be available as a stand-alone product priced at $199. The other major newcomer, the OneNote note-taking tool, will also go for $199, but a $100 mail-in rebate will be available to those who also buy one of the productivity suites.
Server Prices
Microsoft also announced a range of prices for its server products.
The software giant will charge $5619 for its SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which includes five client licenses. Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition will cost $3999, and Project Server 2003 will cost $1499.
Microsoft will charge $929 for Live Communications Server 2003, plus licenses of $35 per client; and $699 for Exchange Server Standard Edition.
Microsoft also announced prices for several editions of Windows Server 2003. Standard Edition plus five client licenses will go for $999; with an additional five client licenses the price rises to $1199. The 32-bit version, Enterprise Edition, will go for $3999, including 25 client licenses. Other versions, including the 64-bit Enterprise Edition, Datacenter Edition, and Web Edition are not available at retail.
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