Microsoft Office deal for university students: just $64 purchase price

Hi everyone,

For the last several years now, Microsoft has had a promotion on called "The Ultimate Steal": Basically, if you're a student a participating university (including my alma mater STFX), you can purchase complete Office 2007 Ultimate (not crippled in any way) for just $64. After verifying your attendance (which in most cases seems to be simply automatic with a valid school's email address), you can enter your payment information and get a download of the installer file along with a license key. I purchased this last year and have been happy with it ever since. Personally, I shelled out the extra $13 for a backup CD that came in the mail: and I'm glad I did as I lost the installer file, haha. Office 2007 has a lot of great features to get school work done: for me, the scripting abilites in Excel make for a great way to write quick data crunching programs and you can't forget Powerpoint for printing off those lecture notes. I think it's a great piece of software in general, and though I might not think it's worth anything close to the suggested retail price ($679.95 USD, ouch), it's definately worth $64, if it's a piece of software you think you'd like (and/or like bargins).

But wait! If you are thinking of buying it, you might do yourself a favor by checking out some of the great, free alternatives including OpenOffice.org, Abiword and Google Docs. I've used all the free alternatives, each of which has their own strengths and faults (as does Office of course). It won't cost anything to use them and you might just end up liking them enough to save the money all together. But if you feel they just won't cut it for you, Office is ready for your download (note: I don't think the Mac version is available in the offer, but I'm not sure so you should double check if you're an OS X user). I also wouldn't suggest trying this unless you can prove your enrollment if necessary, lest you end up with a much larger charge then you expected! I was fully enrolled at the time though and was never asked to send anything in.

Have a good year everyone!