That's right. Microsoft decided that not enough people were purchasing upgrades (huh?) so they've eliminated upgrade pricing for the newest version of Office. Even if you already own Office 2007, you have to pay full price for an "upgrade"!
Here's how the pricing works - each version (Home & Student, Home & Business, and Professional) has two price points: Full Packaged Product (FPP) and Product Key Card (PKC). The FPP includes the media and two licenses (one for your desktop and one for your laptop) - the licenses are transferable. The PKC doesn't come with media (it's either pre-installed on a new computer or it can be downloaded) and it comes with only one license. And that one license is not transferable. If you replace your computer, you'll have to buy another license! Although the PKC is about 30% less than the full package, it will probably end up costing you more in the long run. (You can see the complete pricing information here.)
I've been using the trial version of Office 2010 for about 6 months and, quite honestly, I'm not all that impressed with it. Outlook kept locking up while I was composing messages forcing me to start over every time. I didn't see any new must-have bells and whistles in Word, Powerpoint or Excel. Publisher is now only available in the Professional version (it was included in the Small Business version in 2007). Based on this, I was on the fence about whether I would upgrade or not. Microsoft made the decision easy.
Unfortunately, I discovered that I'll have to reinstall Office 2007 at some point. My old versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher are still there, but Outlook has been completely hosed <sigh>.
It simply boggles my mind that Microsoft would make a decision like this ... especially with open-source software easily available (and free). Google Docs, anyone?
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