from Ken "Caesar" Fisher
Office 2007 is expected to ship sometime in the second half of 2006. Upgrade addicts, here it comes. Microsoft has announced the product details for Office 12, now christened Office 2007.
"The 2007 release is the productivity breakthrough that customers have been asking for," said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft. "Today, we’re revealing new products in the Microsoft Office system and a number of new options that provide customers with flexibility in how they purchase our products. That’s great news for businesses eager to provide their workers with the best productivity tools possible for information management and collaboration."
The retail entry level for Office 2007 will remain at US$149—it features Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Office Standard 2007, which includes Outlook as well as the standard trinity of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, will retail for $399. Upgrades to this version will be $239, and this is the lowest price that any 2003 users can pay to upgrade to 2007, since upgrades are not available for Basic or academic versions. Small Business 2007 adds Publisher 2007 and the business contacts manager for Outlook, for $449 ($279 upgrade). Well, the Professional edition will cost $499 ($329 upgrade), and the extra $50 gets you Microsoft Access. Two new editions—Professional Plus and Enterprise—will be available to volume licensing customers only. Professional Plus adds InfoPath, Office Communicator, and "integrated solution capabilities such as ECM, electronic forms, and information rights and policy capabilities. To this, Enterprise adds OneNote (note: this is only available otherwise in Home and Student) and Groove.