Tech Shout!

Microsoft has announced that January 2008 will see the launch is three new versions of the Office 2008 for Mac Suite. Amongst the three, the steepest priced one will be targeted towards creative professionals who are weighed down by the chore of organizing their digital media files. The announcement was made yesterday at the Apple Expo in Paris, France.

Priced at $150, “Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition”, will bundle three licenses for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage along with an e-mail/calendar/contacts program.

The next version is for those professionals who make use of Apple’s computers. Titled “Office 2008 for Mac” ,this $400 version packs in the same programs as Home and Student, and also features the ability to connect to a Windows Exchange server.

The highest priced “Special Media Edition”, which comes for $500 includes all the features that are present in the $400 config, and in addition include Expression Media, a program through which computer users can organize and manipulate digital photos, video and other files. A standalone version of the Expression Media costs $299; hence the Special Media Edition surely makes a lot of sense as by just shelling out an extra $100, you get a lot more,

All the three versions of the Office 2008 for Mac Suite are compatible with Intel-based Macs and older PowerPC systems.

And for those not-so-patient users who just cannot wait till the dawn of 2008 and of course just can’t wait for Office, Microsoft is offering an upgrade program. For the price of shipping, handling and taxes, which comes to approx. $10 in the U.S., Apple will send across a comparable 2008 suite to people who buy the Standard Edition or the Student and Teacher Edition of Office 2004 for Mac between now and March 15.

Though Mac Office 2008 was originally slated for 2007-end for release, Microsoft decided to delay the release of its Office 2008 software for Apple’s Mac computers until mid-January 2008. The delay was to fix the remaining flaws in the software.