If you're a university student, the news is even better: $99 buys you a whopping four-year subscription for two PCs or Macs.
That works out to be just $12.38 per PC per year, which is cheap enough to afford even on a student's terrible barista wages.
But wait, there's more! The extras are even better than a set of free steak knives.
The other bits
If you sign up to Office 365 Home Premium, Microsoft will also throw in a 20GB SkyDrive account, which is Microsoft's cloud storage service (similar to Dropbox or iCloud).
It's worth pointing out that anybody can get a free 7GB SkyDrive account, even if they never purchase a Microsoft product, but with every application in Office 2013 now heavily integrated with SkyDrive, you'll be surprised how handy the extra storage proves to be.
If only Aussies had the upload speed to make the most of it, we could all forget about upgrading our hard drives.
Microsoft has also thrown in 60 minutes of Skype phone calls each month, allowing you to call telephones in over 40 countries.
Finally, subscribers automatically get upgraded to the latest version of the suite.
In 2025, subscribers will have the Office suite piped directly into the subneural USB 9.0 plug at the base of their necks.
Which one should I buy?
We've got to hand it to Microsoft — turning Office 2013 into a subscription service is a massive gamble that requires coconut-sized cojones.
Whether or not to dive into the subscription pool will come down to two choices.
Firstly, how often do you upgrade your copy of Office? If you do it every three years, then the subscription model means you'll always have the most recent version of the software and you're only paying slightly more for the privilege of extra SkyDrive storage and Skype minutes.
However, the most important factor is how many people you'll be sharing your subscription with.
If you're a mysterious loner who despises the thought of conversing with other human beings, you're much better off buying the standalone version.
For those with close friends and family, the subscription deal offers incredible value, which increases as the number of installs you use increases.
It'll be very interesting to see how Office 365 Home Premium performs. Our gut feeling is that the majority of people will still stick with the standalone Office 2013 product, as the extras from the subscription service aren't quite tempting enough to justify the price, and the thought of a subscription is still rather scary, despite the great value for bigger households.
However, we expect more people to move to subscription versions as time goes on and we wouldn't be surprised at all if the 2019 edition is subscription only.
