Office 2010 and Web Apps set for June 15th launch

Office 2010 will be released to consumers on June 15th, with access to the online Office Web Apps following “several weeks” later.

Microsoft’s next-gen suite will be offered in three retail editions and a fourth ‘Academic’ bundle for students and teachers

The entry-level Office Home and Student 2010 containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will sell for $209 and can be installed on three PCs.

Home and Business 2010, which adds Outlook to the Home and Student mix, will cost $379 with a two-PC licence.

The top-shelf Office Professional 2010 – containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access – carries an $849 sticker with a two-PC licence.


Single-install Product Key Cards, which can unlock a trial edition of Office 2010 PC preloaded on a new PC or downloaded from the Internet, shave between 20% and 45% off the price for the boxed software.

Also, as previously reported, Microsoft will not offer discounted upgrade pricing to owners of previous versions of the suite – everyone will pay the full price.

Students and teachers from kindergarten through to colleges and university will be eligible for Office Professional Academic 2010, which contains the same applications as Office Professional 2010 but is expected to be offered at a steeply discounted price

However, users will need to wait a little longer before they can use Office Web Apps – the new browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, which will be hosted on Windows Live with files stored on Microsoft’s SkyDrive service.

Microsoft Australia hedged at today’s Office 2010 launch, saying the final launch date for Office Web Apps was not yet decided and the service would move form beta to 1.0 stage “in the next couple of months”.

But a senior veep from Microsoft HQ, speaking at the suite’s US launch, said that Office Web Apps would begin rolling out on the same June 15th launch date as the consumer software.



However, Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Business division, said the need to upgrade Windows Live to Office Web Apps compatibility – part of the service’s ‘Wave 4’ refresh – meant it would take several weeks to reach everyone.

“It's not as coordinated as the retail launch, where you should be able to walk into any store and see shrink-wrapped product… it’s a little bit of rolling thunder.”