While I haven't had any customers ask to purchase Microsoft Works in years, it still appears on the odd retail boxed laptop. With the coming release of Office 2010, Microsoft has decided it's high time to tag and bag Works and replace it.
Stepping in to fill the void will be Office 2010 Starter, which will be targeted at the average consumer's needs. Starter will package only Word and Excel with basic creation and editing abilities, and will be ad-supported.
Over on the Office Engineering Blog, VP Takeshi Numoto posted "Office Starter 2010 will provide new PC owners with immediate exposure to the Office 2010 experience on new PCs right out of the box." You know, kind of like how just about every boxed PC does that now with the 60-day Office 2007 trial. Except instead of a time-limited but full-featured Office experience, you'll get a stripped-down feature set at no cost. Ever.
Microsoft dangled another Office lock-in carrot recently with the introduction of Office Web Apps. Whatever the motivation - competition with Google Docs and OpenOffice.Org, for example - I'm sure most Windows users will welcome the opportunity to get any legal MS Office apps for free.
Hmm...Office Starter, huh? There's not going to be some asinine 7 document limit in this thing, right?
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