Microsoft raises Mac Office prices, ends multi-license packs

Purchasing a copy of Mac Office 2011 Home & Student (single license) will now set you back about $140 -- about $20 more than retail prices from last year. Unlike a finely crafted wine though, most software titles don't necessarily...

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This is truly ridiculous... I was just thinking of purchasing this for my mac, but now I think I will stick with Google Docs.

All the prices seem to be going up even the 2010 versions have gone up! I have started using Open Office and it seems just as sophisticated as the MS offerings. It seems a crazy policy as most folks are strapped for cash and purchase of software must be a low priority.

The subscription server for $100 isn't bad if you have 3 or more machines and they are used for both business and home use. Personally I would do that if I had the need for Outlook. 5 licenses for Office and they work for both PC and MAC.

Ah, but it is not. I have only had Open Office over the years and I do not like it very much...

Using Office 365 on my PC's and single Mac, seems to work well except Outlook on Mac won't sync in the same way it does on my PC's (and on my Windows Phone). So I've disabled it for now

What is it about Open Office that is not as sophisticated as MS Office? What is it that you don't like about it? It is nearly the same as MS Office. It offers you the option of saving in Open Office format or any of the MS Office formats. Open Office offers the same functionality as MS Office at a much more reasonable price. I have been using Open Office for years with not a single issue that would make me even consider spending a single penny on MS Office.

This price increase is simply an indicator of MS's arrogance.

I currently use Excel at work and I use many of the advanced functions, so I could argue that it would be inconvenient to change. However I did start with Supercalc and moved to Lotus 123 so changing to OpenOffice Calc would not worry me.

One great advantage Calc has over Excel is copying data from a table in PDF document to a spreadsheet. It can be done preserving the columns.

Denial. Thinking they can allow themselves to do something like this. Sometimes you can make something more desirable by making it more expensive, but it might have worked better when more people had more money, not now.

It reminds me of the quote 'nobody got the sack for buying IBM'. For the youngsters IBM was a very successful organisation which led the PC industry in the 80's. I wonder if history is about to repeat.