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The latest version of the all-singing all-dancing Office suite that replaces Office 2000 will be available for similar retail prices.

There are four versions: Standard (ERP £429, upgrades £199), Professional (£519, £269), Professional Special Edition (ERP £319) and Developer (£749, £449).

The core desktop tools in Office XP Standard include Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002 and PowerPoint 2002.

Office XP Professional includes Word 2002, Excel 2002,

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PowerPoint 2002, Outlook 2002 and Access 2002. A Special Edition of this suite will be available for a limited time to existing Office users. It will include Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002, PowerPoint 2002, Access 2002, FrontPage 2002, SharePoint Team Services, Publisher 2002, and the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer.

The largest offering, Office XP Developer incorporates all of Professional plus FrontPage 2002, SharePoint Team Services, and other developer-oriented tools.

The 30-day trial scheme will be available from the Office section of the Microsoft Web site in late May. The trial-before-you-buy will be free, if you don't count handling and shipping costs.

For those buying new PCs, there will be two pre-installed versions: Office XP Small Business (includes Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002 and Publisher 2002) and Office XP Professional with Publisher (includes Word 2002, Excel 2002, Publisher 2002, PowerPoint 2002, Outlook 2002 and Access 2002). Pricing, in this case, will be determined by the PC builder.