Microsoft Unveils Home Essentials 97
July 5th, 2007
Microsoft today released Home Essentials 97, its new software bundle for home PC users.
The $109, 125MB package consists of Word 97, Encarta 97, Works 4.0 (which includes spreadsheet and database tools), Arcade (which includes Asteroids and several other basic games), and Greetings Workshop, a greeting card designer. Sold separately, the applications would cost $500-plus.
The package doesn’t include Microsoft Money, the personal finance manager. But Home Essentials 97 ought to satisfy 80 percent of home users, said Mary Lofredo Wardley, consumer applications analyst for research firm International Data Corporation. She noted that besides the savings on Microsoft’s big-name applications, the package has little extras that will please home users, such as fonts and clip art.
People in the home environment gobble that stuff up, Wardley said. The fonts and the clip art I’ve always kind of viewed that as the throwaway part of the package from the business perspective, but in a home environment, that clip art moves to the top of the list of, ‘Oh, I’ve maxed out my clip art, I’ve used all those images and I want to augment my letters or my banners or whatever and I need more clip art.’
Microsoft Home Essentials 97 is in stores now.
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