The Ultimate Steal: A Deal on the 2007 Microsoft Office System for Students

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 now offered via the Web to students looking for a premium Microsoft Office suite at student pricing.

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 21 -- As part of Microsoft Corp.'s commitment to education, the company is re-introducing The Ultimate Steal program this school year, inviting students who are actively enrolled at educational institutions to purchase Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 at a low student price of $59.95 (U.S.). This program begins in the United States today with additional countries to be launched throughout the year. The offer will be available to students throughout the academic school year.

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Office Ultimate 2007 provides students with a comprehensive set of tools that can help them create high-quality documents, gather and consolidate lecture notes and other information, stay organized, find what they are looking for quickly, and easily collaborate with colleagues and professors across geographies. Office Ultimate 2007 includes the entire Microsoft Office toolset that students are accustomed to working with and more, including Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office Access 2007, Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007.

Additional Products Offered this School Year

This year, The Ultimate Steal program features additional products, including the following:

-- Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade.(1) The most comprehensive edition of Windows Vista, combining the power, security and mobility features that you need for work with all the entertainment features that you want for fun.

-- Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007.(1) Visio Professional makes it easy for students to visualize, explore and communicate complex information. Students can go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to Visio-based diagrams that communicate information at a glance.

-- Microsoft Office Language Packs.(1) Office Language Packs help multilingual students who routinely create or edit documents in different languages by providing the flexibility of switching the entire user experience -- including menus, help and proofing tools such as spell checker, dictionary and thesaurus -- to any of 37 different languages.

The additional products will be available in the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2008. Those wanting to see what upgrades are available in which countries should visit http://www.theultimatesteal.com/.

Student Response

"Students responded overwhelmingly to The Ultimate Steal last year, telling us that they need Microsoft Office for their studies and want more flexible ways to get the latest version," said Naman Khan, worldwide public sector strategy manager for Microsoft Office. "This offer provides students with an accessible and convenient means to acquire technology at a great price to help them reach their academic goals. The Ultimate Steal is the latest offer in a long history of compelling academic offers from Microsoft to students, and we're happy to extend the program to several additional countries this year."

Moses Adeyinka, a third-year student at The University of West England studying business and HR management, said, "I purchased Office Ultimate 2007 last year because I bought a new laptop and needed Microsoft Word to compose essays, write my curriculum vitae to get a job placement, and complete other coursework. I saw the student deal and jumped at the chance for the latest version of the software at a really low price. If you think about it, the price is lower than a concert ticket or eating out in a nice restaurant -- definitely worth the buy."

Amberly Metson, pursuing a bachelor's degree in education at the University of British Columbia, added: "This is really high quality software at a great price. And it's really easy to download The Ultimate Steal -- I just had to enter my .edu address, contact and billing information, and I was up and running in no time."

To be eligible for The Ultimate Steal, students must be enrolled in an academic institution and carry at least a 0.5 course credit. Students can find program details and see if they are eligible at http://www.theultimatesteal.com/.

The program will be rolled out to several additional countries in the future, including the Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and other countries yet to be announced.

Microsoft's Commitment to Students

Committed to extending the reach of high-quality education to all, Microsoft offers other products and solutions for academic excellence, including Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta (http://www.workspace.officelive.com/), the new, free, Web-based extension of Microsoft Office that lets students access their documents online and share their work with others. The service lets students organize documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer. Students can save more than 1,000(2) Microsoft Office documents to one place online, and access and share them via the Web.

In addition, the Microsoft Live at edu program offers students and alumni 5GB Hotmail or 10GB e-mail inboxes, password-protected online storage space, shared calendars, blogging tools and access to these services on a mobile phone -- all at no cost to the schools or students. Since Microsoft Live at edu launched in March 2005, thousands of universities, colleges and K-12 schools in 86 countries have enrolled in the Live at edu program. More information about Microsoft Live at edu can be found at http://get.live.com/edu.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

  (1) Microsoft Office Language Pack upgrade estimated retail price is $9.95

      (U.S.), Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007 upgrade estimate
      retail price is $59.95 (U.S.) and Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade
      estimated retail price is $64.95 (U.S.).

  (2) Based on average file size and use of Word, Excel and PowerPoint
      documents by students and work and home users