Microsoft Office 2007

Have you heard about the new version breakout? Here are the three low-end packages:

Microsoft Office Basic 2007 ($ N/A)
Includes:
- Microsoft Office Excel 2007
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
- Microsoft Office Word 2007

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 ($149)
Includes:
- Microsoft Office Excel 2007
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
- Microsoft Office Word 2007
- Microsoft Office OneNote 2007

Microsoft Office Standard 2007 ($399)
Includes:
- Microsoft Office Excel 2007
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
- Microsoft Office Word 2007


Do you see it?!? Both the lowest package (Basic) and the Standard addition include Outlook, but the Home edition does not! This, to me, is outragious as Outlook is my tool of choice for email. To make matters worse, you can't just buy the Basic edition, it is intended to be OEM distributed.

I know many of you are anti-MS and probably don't care, but I have found Outlook to be a suprisingly stable mail client. The built-in security is fairly decent and the add-ons I have installed make it easy to manage junk mail. Why would they do this? Does anyone know the reasoning behind this decision? To buy Outlook seperately it will cost $109, which would bring the combination up to $258.

On top of all this, there isn't even an upgrade price available for the lower packages. Sheesh.