Microsoft is going to sell the next version of Office called Office 2013 no shock there.  Office 2013 is going to be subscription based.  The new edition has changed dramatically to better match Windows 8.

An Office 2013 subscription will cost

$8.33 a month or $99.95 a year for five different devices for an number of users

That’s for Office 365 Home Premium, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, but as a subscriber you’re now entitled to all software updates and access to web services included with Office such as continually updated templates.  Microsoft is also throwing in 20GB of SkyDrive storage with the subscription as well as 60 minutes of Skype minutes per month.

Office 365 Small Business Premium priced slightly higher as Microsoft business products always are not surprising.   The package is similar, including ongoing updates.  The business edition also includes more integration with SharePoint, Lync and Exchange services.

$12.50 per month or $149.99 a year for five different devices for a single user or employee

Office will be available as a traditional one-time purchase.

$219.99 for Home and Business edition

$399.99 for Professional edition

Office 2013 releases Oct. 19.  Microsoft will offer an upgrade package to anyone buying Office 2010. If you buy the Home Premium edition, you’ll get the first year of your Office subscription free, and for the Small Business edition, you’ll get three months.  So if you can’t wait to buy office you will get a free upgrade.  Microsoft expects a subscription service will make the most sense for many Office customers.

With the new Microsoft KMS service built into office 2010 you must run the following executable before you can capture your image.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\OSPPREARM.EXE

The reason being is sysprep does not clear out the KMS identifier in Office like it does in Windows.  So every machine will have the same identifier making it impossible for your KMS server to activate your Office 2010 clients.  Run this executable before capturing your image and you should be fine.

1. Open a Command Prompt as Administrator

2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14 directory or Program Files(x86) if you installed a 32 bit office on a 64 bit PC.

3. Run the following command to set the KMS server

cscript ospp.vbs /sethst:name of KMS server

4. Run the following command to active office

cscript ospp.vbs /act

Office should now be activated remember KMS needs 25 or more Office activation tries before it starts working just FYI

Went to stand up Office 2010 KMS server on an existing 2008 server.  I went to install Office 2010 key management host and I get “Unsupported Operating System”.  So I decided to install on 2003 license server again already existing and I get the same error.  I run the key management host on my windows 7 computer thinking maybe I received a bad download runs with no issues.  So after some digging threw office 2010 beta and official release documentation and a few Google searches I found out some very interesting information.  Office 2010 KMS only runs on Windows 2003, Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 all other operating systems are not supported.  Microsoft has released a patch to help those still running 2003 KMS server.  But so far no patch for the 2008 server the only fix I have found for that is to upgrade to R2.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968915/en-us