Shortly after I publish this post, Microsoft will kickstart a campaign called The Ultimate Steal where Office Ultimate 2007 will be sold to students for a ridiculous $59 (retail is closer to $600). This is one of the best things Microsoft could do for students. Granted most of my classmates pirated Office 2007, use Google Docs or use OpenOffice, had Office 2007 been priced under $100, things would have been much different. Heck, I’m so stoked about this I want to buy it and I don’t even have a Windows box.
Beginning Sept. 12, Microsoft will launch a special Web-based promotion exclusively for students called The Ultimate Steal. Students who are actively enrolled at eligible educational institutions will be able to acquire Office Ultimate 2007 via the Web at the low student price of US$59.95. Calling this promotion “The Ultimate Steal” is spot on when you consider that this is a savings of over 90 percent of the retail price of Office Ultimate 2007. The retail price is what students might think they would have to pay, when much lower pricing such as this has been available to students for many years.
Microsoft Press Release
Remarkably, this isn’t just a one day ploy – it will run through April 2008! To the best of my knowledge, all you need to prove that you’re a student is a working .edu email address. However, for now the Ultimate Steal is only for students in the United States, Canada and the UK.
Hopefully this promotion will act as a precedent for other companies with expensive software also largely used by students – MATLAB, Maple, AutoCAD anyone? Large price cuts have historically worked well with Apple reportedly having iPhone sales boosted three-fold after a recent price drop. Do you have any plans to take part in The Ultimate Steal?
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If Office ‘08 for the Mac is included when it debuts, I may pick it up. Although, I much prefer Pages and Keynote.
Good move though on their part. I wish Apple would do that for Final Cut Studio for Film Majors or something.
I’d like to buy it, but it’s not available in my country.
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Nice. I might actually buy Office and make the transition from 2003 on my PC.
Students get some AutoDesk software for free! http://students6.autodesk.com/
Students can get Matlab for around $120 which is an even larger discount Office. Matlab commercial is like $2000.
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@Kyle – If only this included Office 08 for Mac!
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Pretty good, at IU we get it “free”: http://iuware.iu.edu/default.aspx?platform=1
I installed it, but rolled back to 2003
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meh. I’m not that serious of a document processor to need Office- docs and openoffice serve my needs fine. Besides, I’m still on a PPC machine.
But groovy for students who actually do a lot of “officing” of their text/data. :)
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Apparently, a valid email address from the educational institution is required.
I guess this leaves out us high school students. :(
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I am certain i am going to get this considering it is pretty much the cheapest i have ever seen. This is cheaper than the student oem version at the school bookstore.
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PSTAM-
Hey, good post. I am definitely considering a ‘legit’ copy. WIsh it were a beta of 2008 though…
Also, did you know this:
“This URL has been widely reported by users as being regularly used to spam Digg’s submission process and cannot be submitted at this time.”
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Yup, my domain has been banned/unbanned on digg for years now. It’s a cycle. However sometimes pstam.com works.
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I posted this elsewhere, but thought I chime in with it here. Can someone please explain this logic?
Around 11am PST, I first saw a post about this “The Ultimate Steal.†The post said, “Starting in 59 minutes, 35 secondsâ€
Ok, great. Hop on over to theultimatesteal.com – Wait a Minute! Now it is saying over 3 hours til it starts?
Get home, check email… nothing?… WTF?!?! Now at 7:10pm PST, the site is saying over 5 hours until it begins? Um, someone explain this to me? Maybe these MS folks should head back to school so that they can figure out how to tell time?
“The Ultimate Steal†= “The Ultimate Publicity Scam†right now.
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Whether or not office 2007 ultimate is truly a necessary upgrade (dont think for a second i dont want to get my dirty hands all over it) i really think other expensive+highly-student-used software vendors would do well to follow suit(ex. Matlab). The $60 price point is well suited for students, even for a year or two’s subscription.. what you may loose in initial profit you will hopefully gain in customer loyalty/familiarity(sp?). If you can get your customers to become your sales reps, why not..
This idea was trialled in Australia earlier this year. I was at uni at the time and, using a valid university email address, could have got a copy of ultimate for $75 AU (which is about $65 US). For some reason I passed it up.
Not that it matters now, as I have a job with a company-provided laptop, but I probably should have gone for it for my home PC.
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I’m just going to stay with Open Office until I get a Mac, then I’ll probably use Pages.
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On my University at last we have free-for-students software (Windows XP SP2/Vista Ultimate in MSDN AA and AutoCad and Inventor in Autodesk Student Community). At last companies are thinking about students and our “low-cash” problem.
Now I’m waiting for more expensive software, released for educational purpose.
Sorry for my english, I know It’s not perfect, but I’m working on it.
Mike, Warsaw, Poland
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I might actually think about buying this (of course I have to install windows first). Microsoft gives my school thousands of dollars in free software (http://msdn05.e-academy.com/elms/Storefront/Storefront.aspx?campus=usfr_cs&np1=112) and about the only thing they don’t give away is office (like it matters, I use linux), but $60 for Office Ultimate is quite a bargain (especially when I can get windows for free)
The Student Version of MATLAB is $99.00 for North America students (slightly less if you’re overseas) at The MathWorks web store. It includes Simulink and 7 toolboxes, which would cost more than $2400 if purchased at the regular “academic” price (more if commercial).
@Pete- but wouldn’t it be nice if it was $10? ;-)
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I have it on my PC (which I never use anymore) and I think while it’s an awesome update to office, I know there are plenty of alternatives. I haven’t installed office on my macbook pro yet, I just can’t deal with it again.
Thanks for the info. A steal it is. Your turn Adobe… *looks at photoshop*
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A great offer. Though I’m a Mac admirer, I do recommend students become familiar with Windows and office, simply due to the market share. More often than not, graduating students will go into a corporation and will suddenly be in a Windows/Office environment.
If I were still a student (god forbid), I would snap it up in a heartbeat. I already use it, however, because I have to support it. It’s a big change from Office 2003 and previous versions, and people are having fits over it.
It may have not been the smartest move by MS to make it default save to a format not backward compatible with previous versions (without the compatibility pack…)
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Should we go to Facebook to get some college email addresses? I am looking forward to get a valid one!
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@TonNet – you must have the ability to check the email address as the product key is sent there.
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This is going to start a healthy trade in .edu addresses…
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I saw this when it hit Fat Wallet and was quite excited – I’m running Office XP on my desktop and 2003 on my laptop. It’s about time to upgrade, except that I haven’t been able to find out how on how many machines you’re allowed to install it. I’ve heard two, but I can’t confirm it.
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I download microsofts ultimate and it request a product id – how do I get one
They will get quite the business if they did this for Mac. It is too bad that this hasn’t happened yet, for their sake.
in our country office 2007’s price 250 dolar. for student and for other people. I am living in turkey.
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It is a scam and I fell for it. I ordered the Microsoft 2007 program from ultimate steal on 9/12/08. I added a backup DVD to my order at the same time. I downloaded the software onto my laptop, it worked great. I have now waited 6 MONTHS for my backup DVD and still have not received it. I have contacted the company many times hoping to get this resolved and it is always the same thing “wait some more”. I got a desktop computer for Christmas, I downloaded the free trial software thinking that would be plenty of time for them to follow through. I was wrong! I am heading into midterms with expired software and no way of putting the software I bought on my computer.