Seattle - Microsoft will sell four versions of the forthcoming Office 2010 software, due out in June, for prices ranging from $99 to $499 (about R700 to R3 400).
The company said on Tuesday it will sell Office Home and Student edition, which comes with four core programs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, for $149 as boxed software that can be used on three computers in the home. A "Product Key Card," which has a code to unlock one copy of Office 2010 pre-loaded on new PCs, costs $119.
Microsoft will sell an education-only version, Office Professional Academic, through campus book stores and some retailers for $99. Besides the core programs, the academic version comes with the Outlook e-mail program, Publisher for desktop publishing and the Access database software.
Office Home and Business, which includes Outlook along with the four core programs, will cost $297 as boxed software or $199 for the Product Key Card.
Microsoft said it would sell Office Professional, which has Outlook, Publisher, Access and premium technical support, for $499 boxed or $249 for the card.
All the editions come with access to the new Office Web Apps, lightweight versions of Microsoft's core Office programs that work in a web browser.
The Redmond, Washington-based software maker has lagged behind Google in bringing to market word processing, spreadsheet and other software that runs in a web browser instead of on a PC. But Microsoft is banking on computer users still wanting more formatting options and other features enough to pay for the full desktop versions. - Sapa-AP