Starting today, students with a qualifying email address can try Office 365 for half a year.

Between books, tuition, and booze, going to college is an expensive proposition. It's understandable, then, if students aren't particularly anxious to sign up for a monthly subscription fee for Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-based productivity suite, but when you start throwing around the world "free," it's a good way to get their attention. And so it goes, Microsoft today is offering to let students with a qualifying .edu email address try out Office 365 for an entire semester.

Office 365 ushers in an era of subscription billing.

After months of beta testing, Microsoft on Tuesday announced the worldwide availability of Office 365 Home Premium. It's a departure from previous versions of Office, and while Microsoft likes to refer to Windows 8 as a reimagining of Windows, Office 365 is a "reinvention" of Redmond's popular Office product line for consumers. Unlike previous versions, Office 365 is a cloud-service.

Microsoft's inevitable Office 2013 announcement could be seen coming from a mile away, and now that the Redmond software maker has finally unveiled its next generation productivity suite, it's time to wade through the rhetoric to see if we can make heads or tails of it all. That's easier said than done. While Microsoft is making a concerted effort to simplify the decision making process with Windows 8 by offering just a few editions to choose from, users will ultimately have a bevy of online and offline Office versions to sift through.