Crave

Finally, a reasonable price for Office 2007. And it's the retail, three-license edition.

(Credit: Newegg)

In case you didn't read Monday's post carefully, I'll say it again: I'm on vacation this week! But here's a little something to tide you over until I return.

A few weeks back I reminded you that Microsoft is still offering Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95. Of course, that deal is for qualified students only, and it doesn't get you a boxed copy, only a download.

Well, good, old Newegg has the boxed, retail edition of Office Home and Student 2007 for $59.95 shipped. That's after applying coupon code EMCLWNL22 and signing up for Newegg's newsletter (if you haven't already).

Not only does this version come on a bona fide CD in a bona fide box, it also includes licenses for three PCs.

And in case you're wondering, the Home and Student edition of Office includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Note to Microsoft: This is a reasonable price for Office. Not $149.95 or even $99.95. Hope you'll keep that in mind while figuring out how to price Office 2010. (But I doubt it.)

College students get all the breaks, don't they? Like a 91 percent discount on Office 2007 Ultimate (download version).

(Credit: Microsoft)

Welcome to the Cheapskate's Greatest Hits, where I revisit past deals that are still available--and still awesome.

The list price for Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate is a whopping $679.95. The upgrade price? It's an equally whopping $539.99. For that kind of money, it had better come with Megan Fox's Tina Fey's phone number.

Believe it or not, you can score a legal and totally legitimate copy of Office 2007 Ultimate for just $59.95. What's the catch? You need to "borrow" a college student (or, you know, be one).

Microsoft's Ultimate Steal deal is for currently enrolled students who have an e-mail address ending in ".edu" or who attend one of several dozen approved institutions. (Mouse over the "Am I Eligible" link for more details.)

Assuming you qualify, this is a pretty incredible deal. In addition to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, Office Ultimate comes with OneNote, Access, Publisher, Groove, and other goodies.

There's one other small catch: Your 60 bucks buys you the download version of the suite. If you want discs, it'll cost you another $13--still a steal.

Of course, some would argue that most students (and other users) can get everything they need from OpenOffice 3.0, a full-featured office suite that costs nada (Download the Windows or Mac version here). Let me know if you're in that camp, or if you think Microsoft's offer is too good to pass up.

Update: If you'd rather have a boxed copy, Newegg is offering Office Home and Student 2007 (3-license edition) for $79.95 shipped. (Apply coupon code EMCLVNW56 to get that price.)

Here's an interesting tidbit for students, scholars, historians, and folks who like purty pictures: DukeMobile, an app ostensibly designed for students of Duke University, just added a collection of nearly 32,000 historical images, all of them specially formatted for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I could blather on about it (and, truly, I do love to blather), but I think you're better off watching this impressive demo video:

The images come from 20 collections that cover topics like women's history, early American sheet music, and vintage advertisements. Duke will add new collections regularly as they become available.

I'm a bit of a history buff, so I'm really loving these images. It's kind of like having a museum in my pocket.

Of course, as a Michigan State alum, I feel a little weird about carrying a Duke app on my iPhone--especially one that's so otherwise Duke-centric. But, like all MSU grads, I'm mature enough to handle it.

The attendance reporting app used by the Aoyama Gakuin university.

(Credit: SoftBank)

If American school children have to resort to some special mosquito ringtone to use cell phones at school, a university in Japan is doing the opposite: giving cell phones to students. And not just any cell phone--the iPhone 3G.

According to Asiajin, about 550 students and staff members in the School of Social Informatics at Tokyo-based university Aoyama Gakuin received the iPhone 3G for free earlier this month as part of their study materials.

This is the result of a deal that Aoyama Gakuin signed with SoftBank, the exclusive vendor of the iPhone in Japan. The number of students using the iPhone is expected to reach about 1,000. This is the first time a particular cell phone has been used on such a huge scale at a Japanese university.

The gadget will work as a study tool for students, but as it also comes with GPS, which the university plans to use to check student attendance. Truancy is a big problem in Japan, where regular attendance is an important factor in determining a student's grade. Students often fake attendance by getting classmates to answer roll calls.

Now, with the iPhone 3G, the school plans to keep better tabs on its students. Students are allowed to use the phone for attendance reporting (but only if they are actually in the classroom, a fact that will be verifiable based on the phone's GPS), lecture podcasting, and online examinations. A student can't answer the roll call using the phone from any location other than the classroom.

Students can, of course, still cheat the new system by leaving their phones with fellow classmates, but this is not very likely to happen, as people tend to keep a lot of private information on their phones that they don't want to share with others.

As for calling and data plans, the university covers the basic fee. The the hardware itself is free, but students will have to pay when they exceed downloading limits.

In the future, we'll likely be bowing down to our robot overlords. They'll have amazing artificial intelligence and powerful metal bodies. I've long thought the bodies would be electronic servos powered by high-charge batteries, but a new development by the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech might change that.

(Credit: Virginia Tech)

Meet Raphael, the Robotic Air-Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments. It's a gripper that's powerful enough to hold something heavy, say an Uzi, but delicate enough to grasp human brains without destroying them. Certainly this is what the robotic soldiers of the future will be outfitted with.

The hand uses compressed air that passes through tiny actuators to control each finger separately. A microcomputer dictates how much air is given to each finger through an accordion-like tube. Less air means a softer grip, while more air means a firm grip that could rip out a human's windpipe.

The students who designed the man-killing machinery will be splitting a $10,500 prize for winning first place in an innovative-design competition sponsored by the Cleveland-based Compressed Air and Gas Institute, the association of manufacturers of compressed air and gas systems and equipment. Besides standalone robots, the hand could be fitted to amputees as a prosthetic, creating murderous cyborgs or, hopefully, humans capable of fighting off the mechanical menace with their own parts.

The hand is already on its second prototype design, with the newer model to be used by Charli, a humanoid robot also being built by Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory.

I'm seeing a brighter future already.

The Kindle DX is geared, among other things, toward textbooks, a potentially huge target market.

(Credit: Amazon )

Amazon announced its most recent Kindle device this week: the Kindle DX. Though it's almost identical to the original Kindle, this newer model is marketed for use with textbooks and for reading periodicals. While this seems to give the impression that Amazon has presented a more practical solution for college students, it's likely that the everyday pupil will reject this new device.

Currently, most students purchase their books on campus, where new and used copies are available, while the more frugal of us order online from Web sites like Amazon.com or eBay's Half.com. At the end of the semester, students can sell their books back to the school or to online buyback services where they receive a check for about 15 percent of the original price. For decades, this has been the routine.

More recently, however, the words "e-textbook" and "Netbook" have created a buzz around campus.

E-textbooks have been available for some time now, and are currently purchased for use on a laptop or desktop for about half the price of the print book version. Electronic textbooks are an excellent alternative to print books since with them, a student can search for a specific word or topic, copy/paste text into their coursework, comment within the textbook, and enjoy a lighter backpack.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

If you are a college student, you should know you now have a much higher chance of ending up with student loans, than if you graduated 15 years ago. And even if you are one of the lucky few who don't, every American is carrying a burden of about $184,000 in government debt and unfunded obligations.

In short, it's important to learn how to be financially responsible. This is the message that mtvU, MTV's 24-hour college network, wants you get via an online flash game called "DebtSki". The game is is part of mtvU's and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's Indebted campaign, an ongoing effort to encourage students to help stop the fiscal crisis in the United States.

It's a very simple Mario-like kind of game, where you maneuver the game character Piggy Banks through a series of obstacles, while trying to collect coins and then making decisions to spend those coins on items.

There are things you need to collect to win the game; other items are discretionary, which could bring you happiness but could potentially put you in debt. You are challenged to create a balance among happiness, debt, and responsibilities.

Tuesday, Canon announced six new printers that are sure to appeal to a variety of users including small- to mid-size business professionals, photography enthusiasts, students, and creative hobbyists. This new release includes four new Pixma printers and two new Selphy compact photo printers. Let's take a closer look at the offerings:

Pixma iP3600

• $80
• 9600x2400 color dpi resolution
• Dual paper trays for plain and photo paper
• Five color individual ink cartridge bay
• Bundled with one ChromaLife100+ ink set and Easy-PhotoPrint EX software

Pixma iP4600

• $100
• 9600x2400 color dpi resolution
• Reported print speeds of up to 26 pages per minute for black, and up to 21 ppm for color
• Auto-duplexer with two separate paper trays
• Easy-PhotoPrint EX software includes Auto-Photo Fix for easy edits

Convergence is the key to staying ahead in the technology game, so it's no surprise that printer vendors are offering more and more printers that do quadruple duty as scanner, copier, and fax machine. Today, Lexmark caters to the back-to-school shoppers with a handful of new All-in-Ones that are competitively priced but include all the features you'd find in their larger counterparts.

The $99 X5650 AiO is a printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine with an auto-document feeder for scanning/copying stacks of paper. It can reportedly print up to 25 black pages per minute and 18 color. Unique to this model is a port that sits on the front of the printer, making it easy to quickly connect and print through a laptop.

The $129.99 X6650 is also four machines in one and adds a wireless printer server built into the device. It also has a 2-inch OLED screen, an auto-document feeder, and the same reported print speed as the X5650.

Finally, the $149.99 X4950 only has three capabilities (print, scan, and copy), but also has wireless, two-sided printing (duplexing), a 2.4-inch color LCD, and an auto-document feeder.
All three models in the Home and Student series will be available in September.