"I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't businesses out there that are using it," DeGroot said. With its more attractive price, Students and Teachers has undoubtedly strayed from its intended audience. Students and Teachers includes the same four applications found in the much more expensive Office XP Standard: Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Students and Teachers, which theoretically can be purchased only by educators and families with children at home, costs $149, $330 less than the older price of Office XP Standard at retail, and still $260 under the just-trimmed cost. "It's shown them there is a demand for high-quality and powerful desktop applications, but that their pricing has not been right in the past." "The success of Students and Teachers showed Microsoft that people are interested in a full-featured office suite-if the price is right," DeGroot said.
But there may be more to it, and that may rub some business customers the wrong way.ĭeGroot sees the cheaper Office XP Standard for Students and Teachers edition as a possible reason behind the dropping prices. The company said it was all about "a commitment to make it easier for consumers and small businesses to obtain" the popular productivity suite. He questions Microsoft's publicly stated reasons for chopping prices by about 15 percent for Office XP Standard and Office XP Professional, and approximately 30 percent for stand-alone applications such as Word and Excel. At least that's the view of Paul DeGroot, analyst with Directions on Microsoft.
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