Office At Work : value

Students: Last few days to buy Office Ultimate for just £38.95!

StephB — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:08:00 GMT

Students, if you have a valid .ac email address you can get an all-singing, all-dancing version of Office 2007, including Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, Groove and Infopath 2007 for just £38.95. The ERP on Office Ultimate 2007 is £599.99 so this is a whopping 91% discount off the standard price and gives you pretty much every application you’re going to need to get you through Uni.

*The offer ends on 30th June 2009 so click quickly!*

Buy Office Ultimate 2007 from the Ultimate Steal website for £38.95 until the end of June

Do you love Office Online?

StephB — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:34:00 GMT

So, this is my first ever blog post. A little lame perhaps, given that I’ve been working with the internet for… hmmm… around 12 years, but what can I say except ‘better late than never’! I have the great pleasure of managing the Office Online web site for the UK. There are many things that are fab about Office Online but here are my top 3;

· It’s free

· It’s actually very, very useful

· It has a great audience J

Despite the fact I spend my working week making decisions about the site, I never cease to be amazed by the depth of resources available on Office Online – and the creativity of the people who visit the site to use them! Did you know there are over 150,000 Clip Art, images and sounds, nearly 51,000 templates and around 850 training courses on Office Online UK? So whatever you’re trying to make or do with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Publisher or any other Office application the chances are they’ll be something on Office Online to help.

I’d love to hear what you love (or don’t) about Office Online so don’t be shy, post a comment J.

Microsoft Office -- cheap at twice the price

GillLeFevre — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:07:00 GMT

OK, so I agree -- that's not something you usually hear people say. And the survey we conducted earlier this year more than proved the point (if proof were needed) that most people think Microsoft Office is expensive and not particularly brilliant value for money.

But the survey also showed that a lot of people think Microsoft Office is a lot more expensive than it actually is -- on average, the survey respondents thought Microsoft Office cost £473, but there's only one version (the all-singing-all-dancing Ultimate version) that costs more than that.

Are you looking for a copy for home use?

If you don't need a copy of Microsoft Office for work, then Office Home & Student 2007 is a fantastic deal -- you can install it on up to 3 PCs and it costs less than £100. Plus, at some times of the year (eg Xmas), there are some amazing offers available (I've seen it on sale for £58.95)

Are you about to buy a new PC?

54% of survey participants correctly identified "when buying a new PC" as the cheapest time to buy Microsoft Office. (Note: this does tie your copy of Microsoft Office to the PC that you buy it with -- you can't move it over to another PC later on.)

Are you eligible for an upgrade?

Upgrades are a lot easier to get than you probably think. If you own a copy of Microsoft Works (version 6.0 onwards) or any Microsoft Office Product or Suite (2000 onwards) then you'll be eligible for an upgrade -- which works out considerably cheaper than the fully-priced version.

Are you a higher-education student?

The Ultimate Steal is an amazing deal for higher-education students (the link is for the UK site but there are similar offers available in other countries). Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for less than £40.

Surf the web for the best deals

Even if you don't meet any of the above categories, you might be surprised by just how little Microsoft Office can cost. I stumbled across the Compare Office 2007 website, and was impressed by the range of retailers that had some great deals available (although, oddly, a couple of retailers including Dabs and Wstore were missing from their list).

[Note: online survey conducted in March 2008 with 5,000 responses from UK "At Work" newsletter subscribers.]

Defining value

GillLeFevre — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:08:36 GMT

We're trying to move house at the moment and in an uncertain market it's really hard to decide what to set as the asking price. We know what houses along our road have sold for and we can see what other houses are currently being marketed for, but there's a huge discrepancy between both the various prices and what's on offer. And if I had a pound for every time some well-meaning individual had told me "a house is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay" then we'd be cash buyers :-)

Assessing and comparing productivity suites (such as Microsoft Office) is similar in many ways. How do you balance the full range of what a product can do with what it costs and weigh up what you need now compared with what you'll need next month or next year? Do you pay more for the additional bedroom -- or product, or feature -- that might come in handy in the future?

I'd like to ask you directly what you think about the value of Microsoft Office in the UK. Please take this short survey and let me know your views. For every survey that's completed, we'll donate £1 to the NSPCC (up to a maximum of £2000), so you'll be helping a charity as well.