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You can get the new Office 2013 either through a traditional one-time purchase, or via an annual subscription. Microsoft has unveiled its subscription price plans for consumers and small businesses.

Microsoft has unveiled its Office 365 subscription and one-time-purchase price plans for Office 2013.

Looking at the price plans, it’s a no-brainer that Microsoft wants customers to move from a traditional one-time purchase model to the new annual subscription plan.

View the detailed features and price comparisons for the different purchase models and price plans.

The cheaper Office 365 Home Premium subscription costs US$100 per year and gives you the same main component software as the top-end version for traditional purchase – the Professional version which sets you back US$400. (all prices rounded to the nearest dollar).

The subscription, however, allows for up to 5 PCs or Macs while the one-time-purchase version is only for one PC.

So the US$400 you dole out for one PC’s worth of the latter is enough to pay for four year’s worth of the essentially the same software for 5 computers.

If you renew your one-time-purchase Office every four years, the annual subscription model still works out to 20% of the one-time-purchase rate because you get five seats instead of one.

If you renew every eight years, you would still be paying only 40% of the one-time-purchase price in terms of cost per seat.

Plus the subscription model constantly keeps your version at the latest and offers additional 20 GB of SkyDrive storage, 60 Skype minutes, and other cloud-based features.