Software giant Microsoft has officially released its Office 2010 productivity suite in Australia.

Available in three version, the new package comes with a starting price of $209 for a boxed retail version of Office Home and Student 2010 and $169 for the “product key card” version. The top-drawer Office 2010 Professional version sells for $869 retail or $499 for the product key card version.

The product key card version comes with no media and relies on the software being preinstalled by a vendor. It also means you have no official backup media either.

The announcement comes amidst reports that retailers have already begun discounting the package before it went on sale.

Online retailer Amazon.com has the above package available for $US130, $US20 less than the expected $US150 price tag. Even so, that’s a considerable discount to the Australian recommended retail pricing.

However, Australian retailers are also jumping on the discount bandwagon, retailers JB HiFi and Dick Smith are selling the Home and Student boxed version for $178, a $31 drop on the retail price.

The Home and Business and Office 2010 Professional versions are being sold at their recommended retail prices of $379 and $849 respectively.

Still, Microsoft is up against it to sell Office 2010 in the same quantities as previous versions given the greater awareness amongst consumers of free alternatives now available on the internet.

From OpenOffice.org to Lotus Symphony, the open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office will make it more difficult for the software giant to gain traction in the marketplace for this latest outing.

But that won’t stop Microsoft from trying. The company released news in a statement that it expects to have Office 2010 pre-loaded on more than 100million PCs over the next year from the vast majority of tier-one PC vendors including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.

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