Office 2013 Available Now

Microsoft is taking the wraps off its most ambitious Office project yesterday. The software giant, synonymous with Office and Windows, is aiming to turn users over to a subscription package with its latest offering: Office 365. It's an important change for the company, but convincing users to pay an ongoing monthly or annual charge for its latest Office is going to be a hard sell, and the company is very much aware of that — treading carefully in its march towards the cloud.

Boxed copies of Office 2013 and Office 365 subscriptions will be available in retail stores across 162 countries and online at Office.com. However, there's a big change this time: in the US, UK, and other developed markets, those boxed copies won't include a DVD of the software. Microsoft is simply boxing up product codes in familiar packaging for Office 2013 and Office 365, allowing users to go online to download the software. Some emerging markets will still offer DVD versions, but the majority of users will be downloading Office this time around.