Students, Teachers Offered Office XP Discount
Microsoft Corp. has announced that beginning Oct. 25, students and teachers 
will be able to purchase Microsoft Office XP Standard for Students and Teachers in select retail stores for a special estimated retail price of $149, almost 70 percent off the regular Office XP Standard price. This noncommercial, educational-use only offer is designed to make it easier for students and teachers to have access to the program outside of the classroom.
The new Office XP includes full 2002 versions of Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint, and will feature unique packaging to help differentiate it from other retail products. The program offers a variety of new tools that help students and teachers accomplish more in less time, make it easier to share information and enhance their work with content from the Web. Innovations such as Task Panes and smart tags put relevant features and options at the users’ fingertips so they don’t have to search for hard-to-find menu items. New features such as Custom Animation and the formatting Task Pane help students add pizzazz to presentations and reports, while the new Document Recovery feature is designed to prevent students from losing their work if an error should occur. In addition, improved document editing tools make it easier to incorporate feedback from teachers and classmates.
Microsoft is also teaming up with a variety of education companies to create custom smart tags that recognize categories of information. When users type a category name while working in Word, Excel or Outlook, custom smart tags appear, providing them with a drop-down menu of related options to link directly to additional information. Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, (425) 882-8080, www.microsoft.com/office/forstudents/.