Office Home and Student 2013 to come pre-installed with Windows RT

With speculation rampant about Office 2013 coming pre-installed with the Windows RT tablet for quite some time, Microsoft has finally made it official. The software giant revealed through its official blog that Office Home and Student 2013 will be bundled for free with all Windows RT devices. Office Home and Student 2013 includes new versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint. It’s only fair that Microsoft considered this move as Microsoft Office is to come pre-installed in its own Surface tablets.

Office 2013 bundled with Windows RT...

Microsoft gave users a glimpse of Office 2013 on ARM devices (running the next gen Windows RT OS) early last month. It was revealed that this new suite has been designed keeping in mind touch input and power consumption. Compared to Office 2010, Office 15 is said to feature a flatter look and Office suite for Windows on ARM (WOA) is expected to be more app-like, instead of having the traditional look.

Microsoft released the Consumer Preview of Office 2013 yesterday, click here to download it. This release features an intuitive design that works beautifully either with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard across new Windows devices. The new Office is social and unlocks modern scenarios in reading, note-taking, meetings and communications, and will be delivered to subscribers through a cloud service. Click here to see our first impressions of Office 2013. Microsoft has also revealed a mock-up of Office 2013 for Windows Phone, which has deep integration in the mobile platform.

Here's a quick look at some of the highlights of the Office 2013:

• SkyDrive - Office saves documents to SkyDrive by default, so your content is always available across your tablet, PC and phone. Your documents are also available offline and sync when you reconnect.
• Roaming - Once signed in to Office, your personalized settings, including your most recently used files, templates and even your custom dictionary, roam with you across virtually all of your devices. Office even remembers where you last left off and brings you right back to that spot in a single click.
• Office on Demand - With a subscription, you can access Office even when you are away from your PC by streaming full-featured applications to an Internet-connected Windows-based PC.
• New subscription services - The new Office is available as a cloud-based subscription service. As subscribers, consumers automatically get future upgrades in addition to exciting cloud services including Skype world minutes and extra SkyDrive storage. Subscribers receive multiple installs for everyone in the family and across their devices.
• Stay connected - Follow people, teams, documents and sites in SharePoint. View and embed pictures, videos and Office content in your activity feeds to stay current and update your colleagues.
• Skype - The new Office comes with Skype. When you subscribe, you get 60 minutes of Skype world minutes every month. Integrate Skype contacts into Lync and call or instant message anyone on Skype.
• Digital note-taking - Keep your notes handy in the cloud and across multiple devices with OneNote. Use what feels most natural to you — take notes with touch, pen or keyboard, or use them together and switch easily back and forth.
• Reading and markup - The Read Mode in Word provides a modern and easy-to-navigate reading experience that automatically adjusts for large and small screens. Zoom in and out of content, stream videos within documents, view revision marks and use touch to turn pages.
• Meetings - PowerPoint features a new Presenter View that privately shows your current and upcoming slides, presentation time, and speaker notes in a single glance. While presenting, you can zoom, mark up and navigate your slides with touch and stylus. Lync includes multiparty HD video with presentations, shared OneNote notebooks and a virtual whiteboard for collaborative brainstorming.
• Eighty-two-inch touch-enabled displays - Conduct more engaging meetings, presentations and lessons, whether in person or virtually, with these multitouch and stylus-enabled displays from Perceptive Pixel.