Microsoft will announce the release of two new editions of Office for Mac OS X on August 12th as well as lower prices on current versions, according to MacNN sources: Office v. X Student and Teacher Edition, and Office v. X Professional Edition. The educational "S&T" version will be available for $150 and will provide Students and Educators a full version of the Office v. X suite at an "affordable price." It will also include the rights to install the product on up to three Macs in a household; however, Microsoft will not offer upgrades for this version. The new "Pro" version includes the standard suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage, plus Virtual PC for Mac version 6.1 with Windows XP Professional. There will be no academic licensing available for Pro.

The existing Office v. X, which will be dubbed 'Office v. X Standard Edition', will drop in price to $400 for the full version and $240 for version upgrades.


Documents indicate that Virtual PC 6.1 is simply a rebranded release of Virtual PC, with no new features since the v6.0 release by Connectix. Sources also indicated that Virtual PC for Mac w/Windows XP Pro and Virtual PC for Mac w/Windows 2000 will be available for licensing later this year. Virtual PC 6.1 will also be available as a standalone product.



Source say that licensed users of Office 98 or 2001 for Mac or the individual applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) are eligible to purchase the Pro upgrade for $240.

by MacNN Staff