my word

Woo two amazing deals I have seen relating to Microsoft Office that I must share.

I will first off establish that both these are equivalent to Microsoft Office Professional. Microsoft Office Professional is $849 for 2 PCs, $499 for 1 PC. So have a little think of how much you would would not like to buy it full price.

At the SI Group website, all you have to do is provide your DEC (the new version of DET, apparently) email.
Previously where you were like blah.blah2@det.nsw.edu.au, your email has now sneakily changed to blah.blah2@education.nsw.gov.au
This happened seamlessly so that POP/IMAP forwarding was transferred. In fact if you'd blow the dust off your DET/DEC student portal login, and hit the site now, it's much brushed up with better resources like a timetable and stuff that I still won't use.
In any case if you just read the User Guide that they provide, you are on your way to a discounted version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus (one PC). How discounted?
IT'S FREE TROLOL.
Note that Professional Plus includes a few extra programs ON TOP of Professional. So in addition to all the ones you use (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Onenote), Professional includes Outlook, Publisher and Access. Even better, in Professional Plus, you are getting stupid programs nobody ever uses like Infopath, Sharepoint Workspace (formerly Groove) and Lync. No idea what the last 3 do at all.
Note that I haven't actually tried this as I am waiting till my new laptop arrives to install this, but tell me if it works!
I do believe that only applies for high school students as uni's are not DEC. Though if you go to TAFE you're still covered by that above program LOL.
Do what you want cos a pirate is free, but this shit is better!
Found this bright and early in the morning on Ozbargain. I was looking for that JB HiFi Logitech deal then BAM free Office on the sidebar. WHY NOT.
Also linked is one license to Windows 7 Professional and one license to Windows 7 Ultimate. Not that I'd ever buy Professional/Ultimate seeing as it has stuff I won't need... but it's pretty cool to get for free =P

For those of you with med/lawyer/not-TAFE aspirations in mind, fear not the sacrifice of having access to less programs, or paying that hectic $850.
For that, we have the Microsoft Office University. I found that this is installable on on PC and one laptop (I emailed customer support to double check their shady wording). So this means one for home and one for lectures YAY.
Unfortunately you will not get your junk programs of Infopath, Sharepoint Workspace, or Lync.
For peace of mind, yes you will still get Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, Powerpoint, Onenote, and Publisher.
This comes at a dandy price of $99. Considering it is essentially two installs, this is almost as holy fuck-worthy as the free one.
I'm guessing somewhere down the line (quite soon) when Office 15 comes out (not sure if that's because it's going to be released in 2015... they seem to have a trend of every 2-3 years: 95, 07, 2000, 03, 07, 10)
Assuming this University package stays till then, that would be bloody awesome.
I found this as an ad in the confirmation email of my laptop purchase - I appreciated it greatly =P


So in short, one is free Microsoft Office. Properly licensed and registered too! Another is cheaper version of Professional.


By the end of this week, I'd have saved $320 from buying laptop, and $499+ from getting the free office ($499+ as Professional Plus isn't actually commercially available - must be Volume Licensed).
That's enough to buy a decent acoustic guitar. Not that I'm going to, I cbf doing the comparing and shit atm :L
Also it's not really fair to say I saved $499 seeing as I wouldn't've ever dreamed of buying Professional anyway. Screw that shit Home and Student would've been fine.