Over at Microsoft Watch, our own Joe Wilcox has penned an interesting post about how popular Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition has become in comparison to Microsoft’s more costly business editions of Office.

In particular, his last paragraph caught my eye:

OneNote could greatly diminish the value for business users looking for activational copies of Office on the cheap. Businesses would more likely want Outlook. I’d argue the Outlook-for-OneNote swap is as much about discouraging piracy as offering something possibly more suited to consumers.

Joe said it, not Microsoft, but I do wonder whether Microsoft actually considers the purchase of STE by non-qualified persons to be an act of piracy.

Also, I don’t know if activational is a word, but I’ll allow it.  After all, ours is a living language…