Schooled in software

If you're in the market for back-to-school computer gear, you've got more than hardware to worry about. For instance, should you spring for a copy of Microsoft Corp.'s Office?

It's the global standard in office productivity software, of course. Fourth-grade teachers and college professors alike welcome homework assignments drawn up as Microsoft Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. But Microsoft Office costs money - $149 for the home and student edition, and a good deal more for fancier versions. That's a lot of money for software that has seen few worthwhile changes in the past 10 years. Indeed, the biggest change to the latest edition of Office - the annoying new "ribbon" interface - merely makes it harder to find my favorite commands.

Meanwhile, rivals including IBM Corp. and Google Inc. offer downloadable software suites or Web-based online services that do nearly everything Office can do, at no charge.

So how does Microsoft compete against free? By raising its price - or seeming to. Instead of paying $149 to buy the Office home edition, you have the option of paying $70 annually to use Equipt, a new Microsoft offering that delivers Office. That means that in 2009, it will cost another $70 to keep using the software, another $70 in 2010, and so on. For now, Microsoft is selling Equipt only through the electronics retailer Circuit City, but it plans to expand the offering in coming months.

If paying annually for Office sounds like a sweet deal for Microsoft, you're right. If Equipt catches on, it ensures a steady stream of income from customers who otherwise might never upgrade their old copies of Office. But it's actually not a bad deal for consumers as well. For one thing, the price entitles you to install Equipt on up to three computers that run Microsoft's Windows operating system. If you've got that many machines, you can equip them with Office for less than $25 apiece. Also, Equipt users receive future Office upgrades at no additional charge.

Besides, $70 buys considerably more than a good word processor. Microsoft throws in a subscription to Windows Live OneCare, the company's Internet-based computer security service.

OneCare scours computers for viruses, blocks spyware, and allows users to test wireless network security as well. OneCare alone is usually priced at $50 a year - about the same as security software from companies like Symantec Corp.

During a tryout of Equipt, Microsoft's antivirus scanner seemed to do the job, quickly spotting a variety of toxic programs tucked away on my home machine. The OneCare firewall also threw a flag whenever a new program wanted access to the home network.

I liked OneCare's offer to help me back up files to an external hard drive. I'd like it better if it came with a good online backup option. For an extra $50 a year, Microsoft will provide 50 gigabytes of online storage, but only for backing up photographs.

For the same price, the MozyHome and Carbonite online services allow backup for all kinds of files, in unlimited quantities. Microsoft should offer a similar service, or provide an easy way to integrate OneCare with existing online backup sites.

Microsoft's aborted hostile takeover of Yahoo Inc. shows the company's desperation to win a larger share of online services, and the rich advertising revenues they generate. So it's no surprise that Equipt offers links to a bunch of Microsoft's other free online offerings, like a photo-sharing service, instant messaging software, and a document-sharing site.

As for the Office suite, it delivers the latest versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as OneNote, a powerful productivity tool that lets researchers capture and sort text, photos, audio, and video files.

Alas, this version of Office lacks its most valuable program, the Outlook e-mail and information-management program. Microsoft sells it separately for an eye-watering $110.

If you've got an older version of Outlook, you can keep using it; otherwise you'll have to make do with its less-capable little brother, Outlook Express.

Indeed, you can do without Equipt altogether. Products like Lotus Symphony from IBM or the OpenOffice suite are free and meet the needs of most users. Many Internet providers, like Comcast Corp. or Verizon Communications Inc., offer Internet security software to their subscribers, free for the download.

These are sound alternatives, but mainly for computer buffs who enjoy tracking down freebies. The other 90 percent of the human race just wants a simple way to make their computers productive and secure. They want more than software; they want insurance. And for $70 a year, Microsoft will be happy to oblige.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.