Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 (1PC/1User) [Download] ~ Microsoft Windows Top

Product Description

Office Home & Student 2013 is designed to help you create and organize faster with new, time saving features and a clean, modern look.

Product Details

Brand: Microsoft
Model: AAA-02875
Released on: 2013-01-28
ESRB Rating: Kids to Adults
Platforms: Windows 7, Windows 8
Format: Download
Original language: English

Features

Product download occurs on Office.com. Details about the download process are listed below.
The latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
One time purchase for the life of your PC; limited to one "licensed computer" at a time and transfer eligibility restrictions apply.
NOTE: Does not include Publisher, Access, or Outlook.
NOTE: Windows XP and Vista NOT supported. This product requires Windows 7 or newer operating systems.

Editorial Reviews

Office Home & Student 2013 is designed to help you create and organize faster with time saving features and a clean, modern look. Plus, you can save your documents in the cloud on SkyDrive and access them when you are not at home.

What’s new in this release of Office?

The 2013 versions of familiar Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint include new features that help you create, communicate and work efficiently from virtually anywhere. In addition to updating the traditional Office suites, Microsoft has developed brand new subscription versions of Office, specifically designed around the way customers use Office. Each new subscription offer will include the 2013 versions of the Office applications, for example Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus cloud services such as Skype world minutes and online storage with SkyDrive.
Subscribers will also receive future rights to version upgrades as well as per-use rights across multiple PCs or Macs and select mobile devices.¹ Note: The Office applications you can use across PCs, Macs and other devices vary by platform.
¹Visit www.office.com/information for a current list of devices. Internet connection required. Internet and mobile telephone usage charges may apply.

What is the difference between the Office 2013 suites and Office 365 plans?

Microsoft Office is still the name Microsoft uses for its familiar productivity software. Office suites have traditionally included applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. All Office 2013 suites include the latest versions of the applications, for use on a single PC.
Microsoft uses the name “Office 365” for products that include cloud services, such as additional SkyDrive online storage, Skype minutes for home use, Lync web conferencing or Exchange Online hosted email for businesses. Cloud services are features that are enabled over the Internet. Most Office 365 plans also include the full-featured Office 2013 applications, which users can install across multiple computers and devices. All Office 365 products, such as Office 365 Home Premium, are paid for on a subscription basis, annually. Active subscribers will receive future rights to version upgrades as a benefit of their subscription. Entitlements vary by product.

What it includes:

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Office on one PC for household use.
One time purchase for the life of your PC; non-transferrable.
7 GB of online storage in SkyDrive.
Free Office Web Apps for accessing, editing, and sharing documents.
An improved user interface optimized for touch, pen, and keyboard.

How do I download Office?

Please note: This item requires a download directly from Microsoft. Below are instructions on what to expect when you purchase an Office download from Amzn:

Once you have completed your software download purchase at Amzn, you must click the "Continue to Office.com" button to get your software. The "Continue to Office.com" button can be found in your confirmation email, Your Games and Software Library, and on the Thank You page once you've completed your purchase.
You will be directed to a custom Microsoft Office site to register or sign-in with a Microsoft account.
Select your preferred country and language.
From your "My Account" page with Microsoft, select the item that you want to install.
Click the "Install" button to begin your download.

What's new with Office?

Complete Tasks

Experience Office on Windows 8 devices, with an improved user interface optimized for touch, pen, and keyboard.
An improved look and feel reduces distractions for a better reading experience.
The new Start screen gives you a selection of recent documents and templates.

Simple Sharing

Use OneNote to capture and share notes, pictures, web pages, voice memos, and more.
Allow others to scroll through your Word docs in a browser, even if they don’t have Word.
Focus on your audience with PowerPoint tools that let you zoom in or skip to any slide without seeing the slides in between.

Microsoft Office Applications

Incorporate content from PDFs into Word documents.
Add pictures, videos, or online media to a Word doc with a simple drag and drop.
Recommended Charts helps you visualize data in Excel.

System Requirements

1 GHz or faster x86 or 64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set
1 GB RAM (32 Bit) /2 GB RAM (64 Bit) recommended for graphics features and certain advanced functionality⁵
3.0 GB of available disk space
1366 x 768 resolution
Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 2008 R2 with .NET 3.5 or greater.
Windows XP, Vista or older NOT supported.
Graphics hardware acceleration requires DirectX10 graphics card

Additional Requirements

Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10; Firefox 10.x or later; Safari 5 (Mac) and Chrome 17.x
Internet functionality requires an Internet connection. Fees may apply.
Microsoft and Skype accounts
A touch-enabled device is required to use any multi-touch functionality. However, all features and functionality are always available by using a keyboard, mouse, or other standard or accessible input device. New touch features are optimized for use with Windows 8.
Speech recognition functionality requires a close-talk microphone and audio output device.
Product functionality and graphics may vary based on your system configuration. Some features may require additional or advanced hardware or server connectivity.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
1884 of 1983 people found the following review helpful.

Say goodbye to an economical MS Office (now TRIPLE the price)
By D. Graves
I have never been a Microsoft hater, as many are. But the love is certainly gone. Welcome to the beginning of the end of an economical Office purchase (with one exception, which I'll get to later).

Ready to get your new 2013 Home & Student with 3 licenses? Forget about it: they're gone forever. Pay Microsoft your $140 and they will give you a THIRD of what they used to give you for that price: 1 license, not 3.

It gets worse: Are you familiar with Microsoft's big push for "Office 365"? Get familiar with it because this is the last time you will even be able to "buy" Office: you RENT Office 365, you don't own it. It's a subscription service. And it is the future of Office. Don't like the fact that you now have to pay $280 for your desktop and notebook copies of Office (or $420 for 3 licenses)? Say hello to $100 PER YEAR for Office 365. And that will be at LEAST $400 if you use it for more than 3 years.

The one positive aspect of 365 is that it covers up to 5 PC's, so a family will probably save money on the deal. However, if you are single or a couple with 2 or 3 computers, you will pay at least $300 over the average 3-year lifespan of an Office edition. Go one day over 3 years (requiring a 4th-year subscription) and it's $400. For something you paid $125 or so for until now (Office 2010 H&S with 3 licenses was $125).

Yes, I'm giving Microsoft 1 star: Forget about the merits of Office 2013, it's the greed and manipulative practices of Microsoft that need to be exposed here. One day in the not-too-distant future Microsoft will make sure "owned" editions of Office (perpetual licenses) will not work with new editions of Windows (e.g., Windows 10) so that you MUST subscribe to 365. Worse, you will have to ALWAYS subscribe if you want to read and edit your Word or Excel docs, use OneNote, etc.: the apps are DISABLED the minute your subscription lapses. This IS their plan. So, I encourage others to give Office 2013 a 1-star review to voice your displeasure over this 200% price increase and Microsoft's nefarious plans on making Office an extortion racket (they will be able to demand higher and higher 365 fees because you can't say no - unless you're willing to lose years worth of documents).

P.S. One other reason to hate this change in Office: the one license you get is now machine-specific, tied to that machine ID upon install. If that computer dies or if you decide to get a new PC, you now must buy another copy of Office: no migrating/transfering allowed anymore. Another $140. Nice.

---------------------------------------------------
ADDENDUM 5 May 2013

Many who loathe the idea of renting Office have asked, 'Do I abandon Office and find a free suite [OpenOffice, etc.] now, or wait until I'm forced into Office 365?'. Well, just so you know, MS recently announced that it will continue to support Windows 7 to at least 2020, probably longer. That means that if you have Office 2010 or 2013 and run either W7 or W8, your owned (perpetual license) Office product will run fine until probably 2025 or later, as long as you keep W7 or 8 as your OS (and, who knows, perhaps Windows 9 will be compatible as well). If you have Office 2007 or earlier, I would get my hands on a 2010 with 3 licenses, pronto. There's nothing earth-shatteringly special about 2013 and many hate it compared to 2010, even aside from the pricing/licensing nonsense.
419 of 437 people found the following review helpful.

Good, but not a significant step forward from Office 2010
By F
TL;DR: Office 2013 is a good product in its own right, but it's pretty much the same as Office 2010 with SkyDrive integration, touch mode, some new annoyances, and higher pricing. I would not recommend upgrading from Office 2010. If you do not have Office 2010, see if you can live with the competition (OpenOffice, Google Drive) before buying this.
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About a month ago, I installed Windows 8 and the final version of Office 2013 on a Dell XPS 13. A bit about me: I'm a graduate student and a long-time user of Microsoft Office. I've used Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote almost every day for the past 5 years, but OneNote the most by far. I've used every version of Office since 1997.

As other reviewers have pointed out, the biggest changes to Office 2013 from Office 2010 are SkyDrive integration, touch gestures, and a flatter UI to match Windows 8. Since I don't use SkyDrive often, don't have a touchscreen, and am indifferent to the flatter look, I'll leave those aspects to other reviews. If you're like me and aren't particularly excited by SkyDrive (which still isn't as versatile as Google Docs for real-time collaboration), then Office 2013 is practically the same as Office 2010 in terms of how everything works - most of the time. This is not a bad thing, at least in my opinion, since I really liked Office 2010 and its improved Ribbon UI.

What I wanted to talk about here are the changes that Microsoft has made to Office 2013 from Office 2010 that I've noticed, changes that might impact daily workflow for users upgrading from previous Office versions.

OneNote 2013:
---------------
I spend at least 4 hours a day in this program, so I'll start with this. As far as I can tell, there are no significant changes in terms of features. Buttons on the ribbon are shuffled around a bit, but the feature set is still the same, as is the file container (*.one) and notebook type ("OneNote 2010-2013").

However, there are 5 new issues that annoy me every single day.
(1) Full screen and pinning the ribbon. In 2013, going into full screen mode means that everything is hidden, except for a very short horizontal bar across the top of the screen. To access anything on the ribbon, I have to click on this bar to show the ribbon first. If I want to pin the ribbon so that tabs are visible at all times in full screen mode, I have to click on this bar, click a menu button near the minimize button (also hidden in full screen), and then click Show Tabs. However, OneNote does not remember this setting. Thus, every time I exit full screen mode or restart OneNote and then reenter full screen mode, I have to re-pin the ribbon again. On an ultrabook, I want more space for taking notes, but I also use the ribbon extensively and would prefer to have it available. This problem did not exist in OneNote 2010, which remembers the user's full-screen ribbon settings.
(2) Inserting multi-page printouts. The new default behavior in OneNote 2013 is to place each page of the printout on a separate "page" of the notebook. I prefer to put one entire lecture on each "notebook page", regardless of how many pages or slides the professor gives us. I've also never come across anyone who prefers to have only one printout page on each notebook page. So for instance, if I were inserting a 30-slide Powerpoint, OneNote 2013 would create 30 new notebook pages. There is an option to turn this off in the options, but OneNote then shows a dialog box asking me to choose between the two options every time I want to insert a printout. Since I insert several files a day, this gets annoying very quickly. Once again, OneNote 2010 did not have this problem.
(3) Inserting more than 1 multi-page printout on the same notebook page. If I try this, then the second printout is somehow inserted under the first printout, i.e. the first printout overlaps and covers up the second printout. It only happens when the printouts are both at least several pages long or if I've annotated the page already; the program disregards my cursor location. To work around this, I have to put the second printout on a new notebook page and then copy/paste the printout pages back to the first notebook page. This problem also did not exist in OneNote 2010.
(4) Zoom level changes when inserting printout: it always defaults back to 100%. I take notes at 115% on my ultrabook, so every time I insert a printout, I have to readjust the zoom level.
(5) Drawing tools. I have no idea how Microsoft managed to mess this up when going from 2010 to 2013, but half the time I try to draw an arrow, it ends up being a line with a V in the middle, or the arrowhead is completely detached from the line. In fact, I can't even draw a plain line properly sometimes. I haven't tried the other shapes much, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were problems there too. I've given up and resorted to drawing arrows freehand with the pen tool instead.

These issues may seem minor to some, but they affect me every day, so I wanted to give a heads-up to anyone else who uses OneNote the same way I do. I wish that Microsoft had spent more time implementing useful features (e.g. still can't rotate or crop a printout; search results are still clunky) or at least providing options to change these new behaviors in settings.

Word 2013:
--------------
Now, when you open up Word (and Excel/Powerpoint), you're presented with a selection of templates instead of just a blank document, which is one extra click away (this can be turned off in Options). Other than that, the feature set for Word has remained largely the same. I have noticed significant lag when saving large Word documents, even to SSD - I was working on a 20MB file and Word would freeze up for 10-15 seconds every time I saved, despite my computer being pretty new. I tried tweaking the settings, disabling hardware acceleration, etc, but nothing helped. This was not an issue in Word 2010 either.

One of the most touted new features of Word 2013 is the ability to open PDF files for editing, but I have attempted to open and edit several documents, and Word does a horrible job of preserving formatting. I have third-party conversion software that almost always gets the formatting correct, no matter how complex, so this was a disappointment. I even tried to open a PDF file that was created from a simple Word document, and Word failed to properly center the title. I would not recommend relying on this feature.

Excel/Powerpoint 2013:
----------------------
I haven't had much of a chance to work extensively with these programs, but other than the template selection page when first opening the programs, they seem pretty much the same as Office 2010. Saving large files in Powerpoint 2013 usually seems okay, unlike in Word 2013. Powerpoint now defaults to 16:9 aspect ratio for slides, which is nice. There are some nice additions and tweaks to the Design tab in Powerpoint, but nothing spectacular. Excel has some handy pattern-recognition auto-fill functions now which seem to work well.

One more thing about Word/Excel/Powerpoint: Microsoft decided to add transitions to everything, which I find distracting. For example, when you type in Word, the letters fade into the page instead of simply appearing, and the cursor glides to the right. In Excel, when recalculating cells, the new values fade in, like a ripple effect. In Powerpoint, when applying a new background, it fades into all the slides as it is applied. There is no way to turn this off except through a registry tweak.

Conclusion
------------
It may seem like I'm being overly critical of Office 2013, but I immensely enjoyed using Office 2010, and much of that experience has carried over here. Office 2013 will undoubtedly stand as the new standard of office suites this year. Microsoft Office remains a powerful and invaluable set of software for people in academia or business, which is why I'm still giving it 3.5 (~4) stars. But at best, Office 2013 is simply Office 2010 with SkyDrive integration and touch gestures. If you're like me, Office 2013 introduces little to no new functionality and a handful of new bugs and quirks that interfere with daily workflow. My advice? If you're considering upgrading from pre-2010, then I would recommend Office 2010, especially in light of the annual subscription-based model Microsoft is pursuing for Office 2013. If you're already on Office 2010 and are happy, I would not recommend upgrading to Office 2013.

UPDATE - SkyDrive collaboration
-------------------------------------------
Recently, I tried using SkyDrive, Office Web Apps (free version), and Office 2013 together to collaborate on some files with other people, and the experience is a far cry from Google Docs. I will preface this by saying that I am not using the subscription/corporate versions of Office Web Apps, which (I believe) have better collaboration features. This is for users who want to buy the retail copy of Office 2013 and/or are considering using Skydrive and the free Office Web Apps to work on files with other people.
(1) Changes are not synced in real time - for instance, if someone makes an edit, all other users who have the file open must manually save and refresh the document to see changes.
(2) Conflicts. After the manual save/refresh, Skydrive roughly merges everything together - so, for instance, if both users write a sentence, both sentences will appear after the first user syncs their changes, the second user syncs the first user's changes plus their own changes, and the first user syncs yet again. If two users try to edit the same word, Skydrive gives an error message, complaining of a conflict and asking the user to manually resolve each problem. If this sounds like a mess, it's because it is.
(3) There is no indication of what other users are editing, where their cursors are, what they're looking at, etc., unlike Google Docs.
(4) In Excel, if a desktop user on Excel 2013 is editing the spreadsheet, then no other users can edit it.
(5) In Powerpoint, text appears in a different size and font when being edited, then reverts back after the user exits the text box...why?
(6) The web apps have been stripped of nearly all features, even basic things like header/footer in Word. This is to be expected, since it's free, but it also means that Google Docs provides a superior experience, at least for word processing.
I shudder to think how badly this system would work when trying to get a significant amount of work done. Google Docs may be inadequate for many power-user tasks, but it is absolutely outstanding when it comes to real-time collaboration - I've written 100+ page papers with other people using Google Docs, and while further formatting is always required in Word after everything is written, we've never had a problem with seeing exactly what has been written at any given time. Microsoft's free solution does not hold up well at all for multi-user scenarios; it really only works as a backup solution for single user use.
360 of 381 people found the following review helpful.

Say goodbye to an economical MS Office (now TRIPLE the price)
By D. Graves
I have never been a Microsoft hater, as many are. But the love is certainly gone. Welcome to the beginning of the end of an economical Office purchase (with one exception, which I'll get to later).

Ready to get your new 2013 Home & Student with 3 licenses? Forget about it: they're gone forever. Pay Microsoft your $140 and they will give you a THIRD of what they used to give you for that price: 1 license, not 3.

It gets worse: Are you familiar with Microsoft's big push for "Office 365"? Get familiar with it because this is the last time you will even be able to "buy" Office: you RENT Office 365, you don't own it. It's a subscription service. And it is the future of Office. Don't like the fact that you now have to pay $280 for your desktop and notebook copies of Office (1 $140 license for each)? Say hello to $100 PER YEAR for Office 365. And that will be at LEAST $400 if you use it for more than 3 years.

The one positive aspect of 365 is that it covers up to 5 PC's, so a family will probably save money on the deal. However, if you are single or a couple with 2 or 3 computers, you will pay at least $300 over the average 3-year lifespan of an Office edition. Go one day over 3 years (requiring a 4th-year subscription) and it's $400. For something you paid $125 or so for until now (Office 2010 H&S with 3 licenses was $125).

Yes, I'm giving Microsoft 1 star: Forget about the merits of Office 2013, it's the greed and manipulative practices of Microsoft that need to be exposed here. One day in the not-too-distant future Microsoft will make sure "owned" editions of Office (perpetual licenses) will not work with new editions of Windows (e.g., Windows 10) so that you MUST subscribe to 365. Worse, you will have to ALWAYS subscribe if you want to read and edit your Word or Excel docs, use OneNote, etc.: the apps are DISABLED the minute your subscription lapses. This IS their plan. So, I encourage others to give Office 2013 a 1-star review to voice your displeasure over this 200% price increase and Microsoft's nefarious plans on making Office an extortion racket (they will be able to demand higher and higher 365 fees because you can't say no - unless you're willing to lose years worth of documents).

P.S. One other reason to hate this change in Office: the one license you get is now machine-specific, tied to that machine ID upon install. If that computer dies or if you decide to get a new PC, you now must buy another copy of Office: no migrating/transfering allowed anymore. Another $140. Nice.

---------------------------------------------------
ADDENDUM 5 May 2013

Many who loathe the idea of renting Office have asked, 'Do I abandon Office and find a free suite [OpenOffice, etc.] now, or wait until I'm forced into Office 365?'. Well, just so you know, MS recently announced that it will continue to support Windows 7 to at least 2020, probably longer. That means that if you have Office 2010 or 2013 and run either W7 or W8, your owned (perpetual license) Office product will run fine until probably 2025 or later, as long as you keep W7 or 8 as your OS (and, who knows, perhaps Windows 9 will be compatible as well). If you have Office 2007 or earlier, I would get my hands on a 2010 with 3 licenses, pronto. There's nothing earth-shatteringly special about 2013 and many hate it compared to 2010, even aside from the pricing/licensing nonsense.