So Office 2011 is going to ship in late October. US prices have been announced - it'll be cheaper than the 2008 version at $US119 for the Home and Student edition, or $US199 for the Home and Business edition that includes Outlook as a replacement for Entourage.

If you want to install the program on multiple computers, Home and Student is $US149 for three computers, and Home and Business is $US249 for two. That's a 'give with one hand and take with the other' situation, because the 2008 Business edition allowed for two installs (one desktop, one notebook) anyway. I think there was a similar clause in the 2008 Home and Student edition.

Some of the Office 2011 features Microsoft has been plugging are localisation for Russian and Polish (but there's still no support for right-to-left languages), a new template gallery, Outlook (notably the conversation view of messages, and the change from a monolithic database to one-message-per-file for speed and better interaction with Time Machine), improved compatibility between Office 2010 (Windows) and 2011 (Mac), and user interface changes that purport to deliver the best of the ribbon from Office for Windows with traditional Mac UI elements.

Oh, and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) - which was unceremoniously dropped from Office 2008 - will make its return.

I'm looking forward to the arrival of Office 2011, mainly because of the way Outlook will simplify my backup regime by allowing Time Machine to do its thing more efficiently than it can with Entourage. But I'll see how I get on with the new application - there's always the option of switching to the standard Mail/Address Book/iCal combo if I don't like it as much as I did Entourage.

And to close with an Apple-related aside that's admittedly more in Alex's or Ian's departments, a city council in the UK reckons that providing each councillor with an iPad (at a cost of £37,000 or less) could save as much as £90,000 in printing and other costs. Despite the rapid ROI and ongoing savings, people are still complaining about the expense.