No, I’m not going to ask you to give me your bank account number so I can transfer money from the secret $72.8M hoard left by my dead father, the former Nigerian ambassador. As far as I can tell, this is all legit.
Correction: Amazon seems to have changed their pricing. You can still get the free Office 2008 upgrade, and if you order today you’ll get the $100 discount, but now Amazon’s price is $147.70. So instead of getting Office 2004 for a net cost of $24.99, it’ll be $47.70. [1650 Pacific Time, 23 Nov 07]
Here’s the scoop: Microsoft is offering a new promo. They call it the SuperSuite Deal. If you buy MS Office 2004 for Mac, when Office 2008 for Mac ships in January, you’ll be able to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition (say that ten times fast) for free. The MSME is the full-tilt version of Office 2008, and includes:
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Entourage
- Microsoft Server Exchange Support
- Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office
- Microsoft Expression Media
So far this is all moderately interesting, but not a mind-boggling offer. On Black Friday (which falls on November 23rd this year), you can also obtain a $100 rebate on Office 2004. This is a one day offer. The Student and Teacher version of Office 2004 for Mac usually retails for about $150. But Amazon.com sells it for $124.99. You can buy the Student and Teacher version of Office 2004 at Amazon for $124.99 on Friday the 23rd. Then you can go through the hassle of downloading, printing, filling out and sending in the rebate form. You’ll thereby obtain Office 2004 for a net of $24.99 (not including shipping). You still have to be willing to shell out $124.99 up front.
Then when Office 2008 arrives in January, you can upgrade for free. I’ve been trying to move away from MS Office for some time, and have stuck with Office X for the few times when I absolutely must use Word or Excel. The Microsoft approach has always been to attempt to do everything under one big umbrella, which tends to lead to bloated applications. I tend to prefer smaller apps that connect to each other when they need to, but don’t get in your face when you don’t need them.
That said, Office 2008 looks like a complete overhaul of Office. The development team seems to be trying hard to pack more functionality into Office while getting rid of the interface bloat that has clogged it in the past. For $25, it may just be worth seeing whether they’ve succeeded.
I don’t know if they’re offering any deals like this outside the United States, because to the best of my knowledge Black Friday is a solely American phenomenon. The Super Suite deal appears to apply in Canada as well as the U.S., but I don’t know if Microsoft has initiated similar offers in other countries.
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