Almost a month after it was officially “revealed,” MS Office 2010, the latest version of Microsoft’s bestselling office suite is now available in retail stores in India. The prices of the suite have also become public - there are two versions of the suite, with the Office Home and Student version being priced at Rs. 4999, while the Office Home and Business retails for Rs. 10,999. Microsoft claims that the beta version of the suite attracted almost 1.3 million downloads in India, but then ah, that one was free.
While we are not doubting just how good MS Office 2010 is - we have used the beta and really think that it is the most powerful office suite we have ever seen in terms of features - those price tags might just stop some Indian consumers from buying it. Legally, that is.
We hate to say “we told you so,” but well, we did, didn’t we? A few days after we had carried a story that Microsoft would be releasing the latest version of its bestselling office suite, MS Office, shortly in India, the Redmond giant did just that. The wraps have been officially taken off MS Office 2010 for India, with stacks of new features, most significantly, better integration with the Web and mobile handsets. But what has really grabbed our attention has been the news in some quarters (we could not spot it in the official release) that the cost of the consumer version of the suite would be as low as Rs 5,000, going up to Rs 20,000 for the professional one.
