MS Office 2013 Pushing Home Users Toward Subscriptions 349
An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports that Microsoft has announced pricing plans for Office 2013 that include a subscription-based model for home users. There will be a $100/year Home version that can be shared by up to 5 users and a $150/year Small Business version. 'Subscription software of one form or another has proven popular in the enterprise (whether it be cloud services, like Office 365, or subscriptions to desktop software, such as Microsoft's Software Assurance scheme). But so far it's a rarity in the consumer space. Anti-virus software has tried to bully and cajole users into getting aboard the subscription train, but the large number of users with out-of-date anti-viral protection suggests users are resisting. ... As another incentive to subscribe, and one that might leave a bad taste in the mouth, the company says that subscribers will be given unspecified "updates" to add new features and capabilities over the life of their subscription. Perpetual licensees will only get bug fixes and security updates.'"
Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Libre Office (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, so why wouldn't any home user choose a free LibreOffice download over a $100/year msoffice subscription tax?
Kurt
Re:Libre Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Because users actually prefer MS Office and are willing to pay for using it?
Turning the screws (Score:2, Insightful)
You knew this was going to happen. Think you bought your software? Microsoft disagrees, and by the way, Microsoft doesn't think you should own your computer either. Anybody so weak kneed as to be afraid to act in their own interest and move to the free and open option gets no sympathy from me.
Support for Access databases on Linux. (Score:1, Insightful)
Libreoffice can open the *.docx format just fine; I just wish there was a way to work on Access databases in Libreoffice as you can in Access. That is my only gripe.
Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:4, Insightful)
It could also be an error checking, a sorting feature, um... what else
It could be maybe mass email lists, or some other functions like that.
Macros are pretty useful in Excel if you know what you are doing. I have seen some cool stuff.
Word... not so much.
Who the Hell is steering this ship? (Score:4, Insightful)
no thanks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Word 2003 still works just fine...
Most home users barely use many of the features of these tools to begin with, they won't see the value of paying $100 a year for this. That's a lot of money to many people.
Re:Good news for Libre Office! (Score:4, Insightful)
>Here's the thing: LibreOffice is by far best when you use its native formats. Weird, huh?
Here's the thing: Normal people who want documents from you don't use LibreOffice's native formats. Weird, huh?
Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Libreoffice spreadsheet macros are nearly identical to Excel now. Not to the point where you could expect some gigantic Excel model to just work, but I doubt you get that even between different versions of Microsoft's product. Writing macros from scratch... it just works. All the same functions are there with the exception of a few really bizarre ones. And Openoffice/Libreoffice has a much nicer implementation of cut and paste than Excel, it works more like cut and paste in a word processor as opposed to the wierdo funky scheme they came up with for Excel. That a big deal for me, I don't want to be thinking about cut and paste oddities when I'm thinking about crunching numbers.
Wow, for only $100/yr I can get free UPDATES? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is kind of funny how the marketing departments of big software companies think we actually look forward to 'updates' which annoy us and waste our time. Now I actually breath a sigh of relief when my BlueRay player gets past the moment where it may insist I have to spend 5 minutes 'updating' before I can watch my movie. I can't imagine wanting to pay $100 in return for being hassled with updates I don't care about. Apparently, they haven't figured out that people very well might pay $100 to never be bothered with them.
Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:5, Insightful)
You're already leasing it. It's called licensing. The only difference is that you had a one-time payment before, and now they want you to pay continuously.
They say they're going to add new features, but I don't see how they can add $100 worth of new features every year. Heck, office 2004 still gets my jobs done. I don't see what features they could possibly have added over the last 8 years that would be worth $800.
The whole pricing thing for apps like this I think is going to do a bubble burst shortly anyway. Who's going to pay $100/yr to lease an app that a cloud app will do for you for $15/yr? I've used Google Docs recently, and while it's not a perfect replacement yet, it's sure a lot cheaper!
Re:Good news for Libre Office! (Score:4, Insightful)
Having animations, color changing, custom fonts, interactive features, and other things will make your presentation unusable. What you write it in doesn't matter at that point.
Re:Libre Office (Score:2, Insightful)
Because users actually prefer MS Office and are willing to pay for using it?
Users don't necessarily prefer MS Office as much as they are locked into it.
Compatibility is a crapshoot and I think there may be active work on MS side to decrease it further.
so... (Score:5, Insightful)
mangling pptx for home use (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:0, Insightful)
It's an option now. Several years down the road, who knows?
Re:Good news for Libre Office! (Score:5, Insightful)
That, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much a textbook example of sour grapes [wikipedia.org].
Slashdotter #1: "My software can do everything your software can do."
Slashdotter #2: "Your software can't do x."
Slashdotter #1: "Yeah, but... but... doing x is stupid anyway, and only for losers!"
Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Several years down the road LibreOffice will probably remain an option. Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow.
Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office (Score:4, Insightful)
Several years down the road, I'd still have the copy of Office bought today.
Re:Good news for Libre Office! (Score:4, Insightful)
PowerPoint is only one example though. I think the issue is that this "sour grapes" issue is rampant in the Linux/open source world. Heck, I fully understand why certain functionality might be missing in a FOSS program compared to its proprietary equivalent (it might simply be difficult to implement, lack of resources/time, etc), but I can also completely understand why someone might prefer to just throw money at a solution that DOES provide the functionality they want.
Most people are more interested in results and will deal with a bit of financial pain if the free alternatives are too stressful to use for whatever reason. It's better to accept this as an inherent limitation with the nature of open source rather than suggest that the user is at fault. Otherwise you're just setting up a case of the user never bothering with open source again if it's failed them too many times.
Re:Good news for Libre Office! (Score:4, Insightful)
LO does a fine job producing .pdf files, and a reasonably good job producing HTML. Those are the only two formats any business should be using in any final draft of any communication, internal or external.