Microsoft Office 2010 in Ad-supported version – Free to Use

13th October, 2009 by adina
Tags: , , , ,

With the coming 14th version of Office (or Office 2010), Microsoft is introducing new models for people to try out and buy the suite, which include a web-based Click-to-Run approach and an Ad-based model.

According to Microsoft’s statistics, 500 million people around the world use Office, and the last two years have seen a boost in sales of their entry-level product, the Home and Student edition of Office.

Available in the first half of next year, the new version will be ad-supported, and will only include Word 2010 and Excel 2010, and offer “basic functionality for creating, viewing and editing documents”. It will also have ads that run in a sidebar with the app window.

Much like the starter editions of Windows, they plan to have this product available only on new PCs. It should replace Microsoft Works as the default option on many PCs.

Microsoft’s decision to offer a free version is unusual. One reason for releasing this free to use edition Is that a large number of users, especially in India, use unlicensed versions. Few here can afford even the cheapest Home and Student Edition which comes for around Rs. 300 after spending 5,000 to 10,000 on a Windows license (if they even bought that).

Another reason could be to use this as a means of thwarting competition against equally free alternatives such as OpenOffice, especially on netbooks where cost of rival operating systems like Ubuntu are more common. Drawing customers away from Apple is another expectation, as it promises a lower-cost option than the $79 iWork suite with a Mac.


  • Share

 

Readers Comments

  1. gourahari mohanta says:
    October 14, 2009 at 9:12 am

    i want ms office 2010