US pricing for Office 2010 announced

Microsoft Office 2010 logo

Microsoft today announced the US pricing for Office 2010 but there has yet to be word on global pricing.

The company made the announcement on its Microsoft Office blog, ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show being held in Las Vegas this week.

Rachel Bondi, general manager of Microsoft Office, said in the post: "The Office 2010 beta is generating record interest and use, surpassing the previous Office 2007 beta download rate."

She added: "In just seven weeks, more than two million people around the world have downloaded and are using the Office 2010 beta. To get a better appreciation for that number, it's a rate of more than 40,000 downloads per day."

Four versions of the software will be available:

Office Home and Student - $149 boxed or $119 for the product key card

Office Home and Business - $279 boxed or $199 for the product key card

Office Professional - $499 boxed or $349 for the product key card

Office Professional Academic - $99 boxed.

The pricing adheres to previous conventions by Microsoft when it launched Office 2007.

The beta for the upcoming software has so far proved successful with Bondi claiming nine out of 10 beta users felt it was an improvement on their current software.

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.