For everyone who’s been looking forward to Microsoft’s next iteration of the Office Suite, there’s great news. Microsoft will now let you download Microsoft Office Pro 2013 from their TechNet page, and all you need is a Microsoft account. The catch you ask? It’s a 60-day trial, but with full functionality during the trial period.
Office Professional Plus 2013 includes the usual Office, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher. Lync has also been included for some suites, Microsoft’s enterprise-level conference and instant messaging tool. Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange will also be available, to further facilitate collaboration and cloud-connectivity across devices.
By offering Office Pro Plus 2013 as a free trial, it seems like Microsoft may be trying to give users a push to subscribe to its Office 365 service, which adds powerful cloud-based solutions to the existing host of Office applications.
If you’re wondering what to do after the two month free trial has expired, you could just flat out purchase one of the Office packages being sold by Microsoft, however, we’ve been seeing that an Office 365 subscription might be more economical in the long run.
For example, which a standalone version of Office 2013 Home & Student edition ($149.99) gives the user access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, it is only valid for installation on one personal computer. An Office 365 Home Premium subscription (the cheapest at $99/year) allows installation of the same suite of applications along with Publisher, Outlook and Access all while managing everything through the cloud. The down-side is the recurring $100 payment. If you’re not sure of all the plans and pricings on the Office suite, here’s a nifty little cheat sheet of a table for you to refer to.
| Suites | Office 2013 Home & Student | Office 2013 Home & Business | Office 2013 Professional | Office 365 Home Premium1 | Office 365 Small Business Premium 2 | Office 365 ProPlus3 | Office 365 Enterprise 4 |
| Maximum users | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 25 | Unlimited |
| Devices per user | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Word | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Excel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| PowerPoint | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| OneNote | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Outlook | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publisher | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Access | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| InfoPath | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lync | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Project | No | No | No | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Visio | No | No | No | Viewer | Viewer | Viewer | Viewer |
| Price | $139.99 | $219.99 | $399.99 | $99.99/year | $149.99/user/year | NA | NA |
Office 2013 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours, but Microsoft recommends installing the 32-bit version even on 64-bit operating systems as they say it would maximize compatibility with third party plugins. A potential downside to the new Office Suite is that it is only compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8. If you’re on Windows Vista (oh dear god, why?!) or Windows XP (as many enterprises still are), Microsoft isn’t showing you any love with Office 2013. Obviously, the Redmond outfit would want you to upgrade to the latest technologies, so the limited compatibility does make sense. Besides, it’s a great way to sell more licenses.
Download Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 from here.