Office Home and Student 2010, the most basic bundle of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, will cost $150. The programs can be installed on as many as three home computers.
A $280 version also includes the Outlook e-mail program. A $500 bundle adds Publisher, a desktop publishing program, and Access, a database.
Those prices are for traditional packaged software. People can also buy licenses, called product key cards, to download the same sets of programs for $120, $200 and $350.
For the first time, Microsoft is also launching free Web-based versions of the four core Office programs. They will have fewer features than the desktop software.
Google Inc. already offers a similar set of free programs that run in a Web browser.