Microsoft: “No upgrades to Office 2010”

David Flynn
21 April 2010, 2:11 PM


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Microsoft will no longer offer discounted upgrade pricing on Office 2010 to owners of a previous version of the suite.


This morning Microsoft released Australian pricing for Office 2010, detailing the boxed retail editions and the disc-free "Product Key Cards" – but curiously, the cost of upgrading from a previous edition of Office was nowhere to be seen.

When we quizzed Microsoft’s Australian PR agency, the reason was revealed – there’s no special upgrade pricing.

“To simplify our Office 2010 product offering, version upgrade suites are no longer available” confirmed Tina Flammer, Office Consumer Product Manager, Microsoft Australia.

This is the first time in Office’s 20 year history that Microsoft has treated existing customers like newcomers to the fold.

The prices themselves aren’t bad, with the basic Office Home and Student 2010 edition – containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote – selling for $209 as boxed product and $169 through a Product Key Card.

But Microsoft’s desire to “simply” things is certain to leave a legion of existing customers running Office 2007, 2003 and even Office XP (2002).


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petert (Cornerstone member):

Looks like I will be sticking with Office 2007 for some time to come . . . unless MS offers a reasonably priced Academic version of Office 2010.

21 April 2010, 2:38 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

To simplify, eh? More like to draw more money from people... Simplifying would be removing the pointless number of versions they have and just offering one single "Office 2010" product.

21 April 2010, 2:54 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

petert (Cornerstone member):

MS is certainly out to rip-off! I read elsewhere that the Australian pricing for the Pro version should be about $550 but it will be more like $850 - that is a staggering rip-off!

21 April 2010, 2:57 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

K (User):

I personally don't have a problem with lack of upgrade pathway if the full version prices are reasonable. I hate having to search for old CDs and licence keys when doing a clean install.

If they really wanted to cash in on it they could always go back to the 1980s and sell each individual package separately, a la Adobe Creative Suite :)

21 April 2010, 3:30 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Fornax (User):

With free products as good as open office its hard to believe home users pay for MS Office

21 April 2010, 5:19 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

MichaelN (Frequent poster):

I've been using MS Office as well as OpenOffice for more than 10 years, and I'm sorry to say that OpenOffice isn't even in the same league. It might be OK for basic home use, but I'd never be able to rely on it for business use.

Try opening a reasonable sized spreadsheet (say, more than 1MB) in OpenOffice - it can sometimes take several MINUTES, compared to a second or so in Office.

21 April 2010, 9:14 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

The groups listed on the following webpage might disagree with you:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments

22 April 2010, 7:46 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

MichaelN (Frequent poster):

Yes, indeed they might. No software is perfect; there are many things about MS Office that I hate, but it is vastly superior to OpenOffice IMO.

22 April 2010, 9:28 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

MichaelN (Frequent poster):

Did you look at that list you linked to? They hardly list any major installations in Australia at all. For example, only a SINGLE company is listed. I don't think Microsoft has much to worry about with numbers like that...

22 April 2010, 9:34 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

Who cares if there's bugger all in Australia? MS is not an Australian company, nor do they only sell Office in Australia.
And don't forget that list is only of people who've decided to let them know they use it. And also doesn't count the places licensing StarOffice because of the support contracts.

22 April 2010, 10:35 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

MichaelN (Frequent poster):

"Who cares if there's bugger all in Australia?"
Certainly not me, but I suspect MS probably care :)

Yes, I'm sure that more than 1 company in Australia use it, and I hope OpenOffice one day improvese to the point that it is a viable alternative to MS Office. Unfortunately, it is not there yet.

22 April 2010, 10:48 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Camios (New user):

Lack of Australian-based deployments... might have something to do with a lack of spellchecker that works with non-English(US) dictionaries that I mentioned?

22 April 2010, 11:51 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Sp33d d3mon (User):

Haha, MS's Australian english is still sort of Americanised - the closest thing to what we speak is actually British english.

22 April 2010, 7:02 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Camios (New user):

I've tried open office. It seems to work ok, until the point when you tell to use an "English (Australia)" dictionary. Then things get interesting, because it is flaky, not only will the spellcheck stop working, but it also won't tell you that it has stopped working. So I won't go back to it until someone proves to me that they've solved the problem.

22 April 2010, 9:07 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Jeff (User):

Last time I tried it seemed to work fine for Australian spelling (on Linux), but haven't used an office suit in a long time. If I want a document (anything you'd use word or powerpoint for), I'll simply use latex to make one, which gives me a much better result (and no, I don't care about transistions in a presentation).

22 April 2010, 1:24 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

Quoting Jeff:
I don't care about transistions in a presentation


I do! They're bloody annoying. ;-)
Some of the ones in MS Powerpoint would be bordering on agonising.

22 April 2010, 3:21 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Eddie (User):

Looks like I will using Open Office now and keep the Office 2000 I paid for a lot longer, as the price point is more than my pension for the fortnight now. I use access in Office and any version that does not have that is not worth my bother.
I have also been TOLD not to pay anymore for OS's so once the support for XP professional is done for it will be linux only here, however if there was a reasonable price for an upgrade this directive would be overturned.
Oh and I like to have the cd's available when I do a re-install of the OS.

22 April 2010, 12:50 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Fornax (User):

To MichealN I did say home use for Open Office. For the vast majority of people they only use word at home to write their resume or write a few letters. Excel they might use when doing a budget. Open Office does these simple tasks really well and costs nothing. Its a shame the average user doesn't know this alternative exists. MS Office is much better in business because of patch deployment and group policy. I haven't used my licensed copy of office 2003 for the last 4 years and although being tempted by special licensing at work to buy office 07 for $40 I just haven't needed to replace Open Office

22 April 2010, 12:19 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

AlexF (User):

Office had killed all the other professional-quality productivity suites, so, now, Microsoft can dictate price as they like.

24 April 2010, 1:37 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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