UPDATED: Microsoft has launched a cheaper version of its cloud productivity suite, Office 365, to target the home user and student market. Office 365 Home Premium included standard Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and could be installed on up to five PCs or Macs and some mobile devices. PC users also received Microsoft Publisher, Access and OneNote.
Although it shared the same name as the Office 365 business suite and had similar functions, the actual applications used in the Home Premium plan were different. Office 365 gave businesses Exchange Online for email, SharePoint Online for document management and Lync Online for video, text and voice communications. The same features in Home Premium were delivered by Outlook, SkyDrive and Skype respectively.
Home Premium also added Office on Demand, a PC-only service which streamed access to a full-featured desktop application running on a Windows PC at home to another internet-connected PC, as long as both were running the Windows 7 or Windows 8 operating systems.
The plan included 20 gigabytes of storage on SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online document storage service, and 60 minutes every month of free Skype calls to landlines and sometimes mobile phones in 40 countries.
Office 365 Home Premium cost $119 per year or $12 per month, 20 percent more than the US price at US$99 a year and US$9.99 a month.
A comparison of features with Microsoft Office desktop suites was available here.