Microsoft reveals Office 2008 for Mac availability, price

Today at the Apple Expo in Paris, Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit finally revealed the new Office 2008 for Mac will ship in the US on January 15, 2008, with global availability coming in the first quarter of 2008.

Three versions of the suite will be available: At $150, a Home and Student Edition will be available including three licenses for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. The core suite, priced at $400, is aimed at professionals and includes the same programs as Home and Student, plus the ability to connect to a Windows Exchange server. In addition, a new bundle called Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition is available at $500, featuring the Office 2008 applications plus Microsoft Expression Media to organize and manipulate digital photos, video and other files – which otherwise sells for $299.

All versions of Office 2008 for Mac support the new Open XML file format and natively run on Intel-based Macs and older PowerPC machines. You can read the full press release here.