Gordon played down the effort to compete with Google Docs and other free office suites, such as IBM Symphony. He said Equipt is aimed at people who are interested in purchasing a PC security suite – such as Windows Live OneCare – and might forgo buying Office as well in favor of using an older copy they might already have, or that they might pirate.

So not only customers pay extra for security which should be a part of the system in the first place, Microsoft is now piggy-backing on those customers buying their security solution and adding Office as well.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone to choose this as a cheaper way of getting Office. The price offset will get negated in two and a half years, and Microsoft doesn’t release Office updates so quickly.