Macworld — Microsoft (MSFT) has announced pricing for Office 2011, offering an apparent $30 reduction in the Home and Student version, when compared to Office 2008's Home and Student Edition ($119 versus $149). But if you look behind the raw cost, you'll see it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

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First of all, there's a big change in functionality in the Home and Student version of Office 2011: it no longer includes an e-mail client. Office 2008 included Entourage, while Office 2011 includes Outlook--but only if you buy the $199 Home and Business version of Office. So while Home and Student users will pay $30 less than they did before, they'll lose Entourage (and its associated project management feature, which, in my mind, was one of the hidden gems in Office 2008).

While this change is bearable--given the prevalence of Apple's own Mail application--there's another change that, I feel, unfairly penalizes owners of multiple Macs. The Home and Student version of Office 2008 included three CD keys, each of which allowed installation on up to two Macs--that's a total of six Macs on which you could install Office. However, you could only use one copy of Office at a time; a network serial number check wouldn't let two copies with the same serial run at the same time on the same network.

As someone who owns five Macs, this setup was perfect for me: I'm one person, and I don't need to run more than one copy at a time. So I could install Office on all five of my Macs, and move my work easily between them by simply insuring that Office wasn't running on any Mac other than the one I wanted to work on.

With Office 2011, Microsoft has switched to an install-based licensing plan. The $119 Home and Student version allows one installation, as does the $199 Home and Office version. For multi-Mac households, you can buy a $149 three-install version of Home and Student, or a $279 two-install version of Home and Office. (Why does a user buying a more-expensive, higher-end version of the suite get one less install than someone buying the cheaper version of the program? That makes no sense to me.)

So to fully license my five-Mac household--even though I'm the only user of Office--I'm looking at either $298 for two copies of the three-install Home and Student versions, or (gasp!) $757 for the Home and Office version (a single-install version at $199, and two two-install versions at $279 each). It feels like Microsoft is penalizing those who own multiple Macs simple because they own multiple Macs.

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