the difference between loose applications, like you are testing against and office is that office, when installed, does have OFFICE installed. you can omit programs from the installation and those keys won't be there. you can't omit office key, as it is what is installed.
you still can buy stand alone office products. I have no system setup like that so I do not know if office keys are omitted then. but if they were, my udf would work correct, as no office was installed. your batch would fail as it would report office installed when only certain component was there.
what comes to the app paths... I stand corrected. Learned something today.
oh, and the sku's on the bit check udf have been updated.
edit: I am all for ending the debate. I did (and still do) have an issue how a certain remark implied on a kixtart board that the job at hand would be somehow easier/simpler/better if I would have had brains to do it in a batch instead.
