Why You Can Trust CNET Microsoft Office 365 Home deal: $53 for a 12-month, 6-user license (Update: Sold out)
If you absolutely positively must have Microsoft's productivity suite, this is one of the best deals to date.
Are Publisher and Access included here? I think so, but you wouldn't know it from Microsoft's marketing images.
Cheapskates don't use Microsoft Office. Or, at least, they don't pay for it: Microsoft offers pretty decent freebie versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint that live in your browser. And let's not forget the various free alternatives, such as Google Docs, LibreOffice and WPS Office.
All that being said, I like a good deal, and this is a good deal. For a limited time, Woot is offering a 12-month Office 365 Home six-user subscription for $52.99 -- one of the lowest prices I've ever seen. It normally sells for $100, though you can routinely find it for around $80. Just be prepared to wait a week or two: This isn't an instant-redemption deal, but rather a product key delivered to your mailbox.
A quick note to college students: Nothing to see here. You can get Microsoft Office absolutely free.
This version of Office supports up to six users, and they don't all have to be in your house. Each person gets a 1-terabyte OneDrive cloud account, which is definitely one of the bigger value-adds. As for the rest of the suite, well, I'm not sure.
See, the accompanying images indicate you get the "Big Four," namely Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. But the description notes that Access and Publisher are included as well, at least for PC. (Publisher is one of the few remaining desktop-publishing tools, so it's a potentially big deal for some users.)
Hop on over to Microsoft and you'll discover that Microsoft Home has been rebranded as Microsoft Family -- so no help there -- and does include Access and Publisher. So I'm assuming that's what you're getting here, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the accompanying images.
In any case, Office 365 remains a subscription proposition, so be prepared to pay the full $100 price next year if you want to continue -- unless you spot another deal, of course. Alternately, you can downgrade to the aforementioned free version of Office.
Your thoughts?
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