For the First Time, Microsoft Got More Revenue From Office 365 Subscriptions Than From Traditional Office Software Licensing (axios.com) 250
Ina Fried, reporting for Axios: Shares of Microsoft hit record territory in after-hours trading on Thursday, topping $75 a share, after the software giant's better-than-expected financial results. As has been the case for the last several quarters, strength in Microsoft's cloud business, including Office 365 and Windows Azure, was the key to the company's growth. Of note, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood told analysts that, for the first time, Microsoft got more revenue from Office 365 subscriptions than from traditional Office software licensing. Why it matters: Microsoft has shown an ability to grow its business even as the PC market has stalled, reflecting moves the company made in the cloud both since Satya Nadella took over as CEO as well as some that were in place before he took over the top spot.
Vendor lock-in stick (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they practically force MS-Cloud down your throat. They know you need MS-Office to be compatible with all your existing MS documents, yet you can't go to another vendor if you want reasonable desktop pricing.
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Well, look on the bright side; LibreOffice and such have been seeing massive increases in support and userbases in the past few years.
I'm also seeing businesses trying out Ubuntu and such, and saying more positive things about it than Windows 10, which is horrible for Microsoft.
The subscription and cloud shit is getting out of hand and businesses are starting to get fed up of seeing lists of 50 fucking names that they need to pay
monthly or such for what should be trivial shit which happens to have non-subsc
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I use LibreOffice Calc all the time, works fine for me. Presentation software I never use. If you want a database, get a real one like Postgres. Access is shit.
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It's ABUSIVE, not funny. (Score:2)
It's NOT funny. Microsoft has a LONG history of releasing buggy programs.
Microsoft fixed more than 2,403 bugs in Windows XP [futurepower.net], before abandoning it.
Absolutely baffling (Score:5, Interesting)
98% of the people who use office simply type letters and notes, maybe make a simple spreadsheet or two. Openoffice is entirely up to the task. [openoffice.org]
I really have to give Microsoft credit, figuring out a way to make people pay rent on something as simple as a word processor.
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:5, Informative)
98% of the people who use office simply type letters and notes, maybe make a simple spreadsheet or two. Openoffice is entirely up to the task.
The issue is that 98% of people who use office exchange documents with the other 2%.
The other issue is that office 365 includes outlook, which open office does NOT match in any capacity. And the subscription includes a decent mailbox, with alll the bells and whistles - webmail/calendar/contact
mobile sync, windows active directory integration, etc... its a hell of a lot more than 'renting a word processor'.
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I have (been forced to) used Office and recently Office 365 - they are no prize whatsoever. 3+ years ago I worked at a shop that used Google's office suite, it works better, faster and more reliably. I haven't used "local" POP3 mail clients for over a decade, but when I did, Thunderbird and Eudora ran flaming rings around Office.
The only reason I see to prefer Office to any other mail and calendaring solutions is because it's integrated into the company directory, and if the company would divorce its personnel directory from office, that advantage would disappear too.
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Outlook calendar integration is quite solid. Comparing with Google calendar I would say G is a 7 and MS a 9. The things that google does badly can be painful depending on your workflow. Outlook/Exchange are also the go-to for many third-party applications.
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No, what he is saying is that he is is a government administration expert. Through transitioning businesses to Office 365 the government's workflow of generating thousands of search warrants is now reduced to just one as they need only access to one address to carry out thousands of searches in a single instance.
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is that 98% of people who use office exchange documents with the other 2%.
So logically it's the 98% that must adapt and keep up with the 2%, right? Something is wrong with the logic here. At some point the 2% need to realize that the tail doesn't wag the dog anymore.
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The other issue is that office 365 includes outlook, which open office does NOT match in any capacity.
What happened to the US having antitrust legislation? If they offer tied products, they should be required to also sell Outlook
and Outlook services separately at its proportionate cost. Tying Outlook to these other solutions is anticompetitive behavior by MS.
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What happened to the US having antitrust legislation?
Have you been following the election returns for the last few decades? Do you know which party controls the presidency, the supreme court, the senate, the house, 2/3rds of the governorships, and most of the state legislatures?
Hint: It isn't the antitrust party.
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Have you been following the election returns for the last few decades? Do you know which party controls the presidency, the supreme court, the senate, the house,
The Supreme Court's purpose in life is to be an independent judiciary: its members not to be concerned about political matters or political parties.
Regardless of the political views of the current president or senate they all have a legal obligation to faithfully uphold the laws of the land,
and the Antitrust laws are among the laws of the land.
Re: Absolutely baffling (Score:3)
You want something that rivals Outlook? How about Thunderbird? Outlook is absolute garbage, come back when you've tried a real PIM.
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"You want something that rivals Outlook? How about Thunderbird?"
I use both. Side by side. Thunderbird is fine and I love it. But its not even in the same league.
IMAP is simply not as powerful as Exchange; the meeting / calendar / contact / directory support for thunderbird is a PITA. You can't set up server side rule processing, away messages, forwarding, etc within Thunderbird. Moving large amounts of messages around still weak. Company contact directory support is a PITA. And even mailbox setup is simply
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I agree. However, the only reason to use Outlook is if one happens to have a Microsoft Exchange based messaging server, along w/ a need to integrate w/ an Office's e-mail setup. Otherwise, Thunderbird/Fossamail works just fine. For RSS, I just use FireFox and stage the feeds from the bookmarks toolbar
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I agree. However, the only reason to use Outlook is if one happens to have a Microsoft Exchange based messaging server, along w/ a need to integrate w/ an Office's e-mail setup
Yes, also Google Apps Sync with outlook is pretty decent too. Not as seamless, but still pretty solid.
Thunderbird/Fossamail works just fine
However, people subscribe to google apps for enterprises or office 365 (hosted exchange) in large part to get the functionality that Thunderbird + IMAP simply does not have.
I love Thunderbird.Thunderbird is great at what it does, but its missing some big things... because IMAP is missing some big things. And OSS has never really stepped up to the plate and solved any of those items in a really good way.
I me
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:4, Insightful)
And FOSS hasn't replicated it with any success in 20 years.
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Seems like Outlook is just a really crappy version of Thunderbird with a Gmail account and IMAP over SSL. I particularly like Gmail's anti-SPAM, the infinite email addresses via '+', and the way I can autofilter incoming emails to different folders.
OpenOffice & LibreOffice are just amazing!
It must be nice to have money you can throw away on Microsoft...
Some years ago, I became weary of Microsoft Office's inability to achieve cross platform compatibility between Macintosh and Windows, as well as MSO not being able to open older versions. So I decided to tryo OO. Documents on the PC opened properly on the Mac, and also Linux. So by that time the Ribbon had come out, and now the whole freaking interface was different between the Macs and PC's, and OO and AO would open word documents that MSO wouldn't any more.
The choice was obvious. Except for people that
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It's a bit of a cascading network effect. Some people at work use the advanced features of MS Office or interchange documents with other businesses that use MS Office and the people they hire are more likely to have used MS Office, thus the workplace standardizes on MS Office. Since people use MS Office at work, it's easier to get MS Office at home because everything is in the same place and they can apply any free practice/training they got at work.
You might think it would be a trivial effort to switch or
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:5, Funny)
I talked with an engineer in ~2005 who "wanted to try Linux" - he asked how he would do things like Word, Excel (Open Office) Photoshop (GIMP), Internet Explorer (Firefox), etc. in Linux. I told him about the equivalent software, his response:
"You mean I'd have to learn new names and icons for the programs? I don't think I'm up for that much effort..."
Re: Absolutely baffling (Score:3)
Then you should switch him to a new version of Adobe/Microsoft products. How many iterations has MSN Messenger been through? I think it's called Lync now or was it Skype?
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I think it's called Lync now or was it Skype?
And for all it's changes they have been so slow that there's actually little to no effort to cope with the change. The name is a classic example. Even though the upgrade the file is still called lync.exe, and the change from Lync to Skype for business was cosmetic. They didn't even move buttons around on the interface. Heck I'm not sure they did more than make the background white, the title blue, and eliminate window borders.
The last truly jarring change was the introduction of the ribbon. That one would h
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Are you sure that wasn't a tongue-in-cheek answer to the fact that Linux didn't have any of the software he's used to, only "equivalents" he'd have to learn from scratch? Because I have made that switch and it was almost a broken record "Does Linux have X? No, but Linux has Y which is kinda like X...", he probably just realized exactly what he asked for and decided to bail.
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I disagree. For someone on that level, the interfaces are pretty confusing and unfamiliar so a totally different OS may go unnoticed. Other than it'll now 10x faster due to no need for A/V.
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Other than it'll now 10x faster due to no need for A/V.
When the computer runs that fast it becomes impossible to form an understandable sentence. It's best to stick with windows.
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My opinion maybe unpopular here but am just stated how these users think ... not agreeing.
Office and Windows are not perfect. We all know this. The users do too. They use what works and brings best value.
Blue E = internet?? That was true 10 years ago. These same users all use Chrome with a few hanging onto Firefox. They switched to better products and until Firefox hit version 1.5/2.0 IE 6 was the better browser. IE 6 was more standards compliant than Netscape!!?? Go ask an old school web developer if you
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While you may be right, maybe most people just think it's a better model for paying for software. I can get Office for my entire family (up to 5 people) for only $100 a year. Considering how much this would have cost with the old 1 Licence = 1 Computer method of pricing, it's actually much more cost effective to just pay $100 a year and always have your software up to date.
Businesses also get a pretty good deal at about $10-$15 a month depending on the extras that you want, but even at $10 a month, you g
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a lower pain threshold way of paying, but ultimately quite costly, especially compared to using FOSS.
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If FOSS does the job for you, then you are fine to go ahead and use it for free. but personally I find that OpenOffice just doesn't cut it. It's missing too many key features and just isn't polished enough for my tastes. Even without the troubles incurred when it comes to sharing documents with other computer users, OpenOffice still doesn't meet my needs.
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:5, Informative)
98% of the people who use office simply type letters and notes, maybe make a simple spreadsheet or two. Openoffice is entirely up to the task. [openoffice.org]
I really have to give Microsoft credit, figuring out a way to make people pay rent on something as simple as a word processor.
Openoffice is unfortunately a pretty dead project and should probably not be touched or recommended to anyone who do not know what they are doing.
Instead, go with LibreOffice [libreoffice.org] (a fork of Openoffice) that is maintained and have a good amount of developers behind it.
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Outlook. Without that, we could switch reasonably easily.
Problem for MS is they botched up with the recent update and our users are pissed.
Personally, I could go either way. The subscription cost is lower than the upkeep cost of stand-alone installs, as end users can be 90% responsible for it. But, we have GoogleDocs included with our email subscription so... something might need to give.
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Outlook. Without that, we could switch reasonably easily.
And the amazing thing is Outlook is such a steaming pile of bloated buggy horseshit. And yet apparently no one can get rid of it.
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And if you "need the Cloud" Google Docs, for 10+ years, outperforming Office 365 even today.
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It's the business licensing. If your licensing more than a few seats you have to buy the enterprise license and Microsoft forced everyone with an enterprise license to upgrade. Our IT was sending out emails telling everyone to upgrade because of it.
IMO it's not a legitimate metric when you force every existing business license to upgrade.
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Looks like that comment ruffled some feathers. I think it's a fair question: in what way was any business forced to buy an enterprise licence and then to switch to Office 365? I've never heard of this in any big business I've worked at/with. It could be that Microsoft has recently changed policy and somehow forced this shift as the GP implied. Or it could be that the GP has misunderstood the situation or is exaggerating significantly for effect. It's not unreasonable to ask which is the case.
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A Microsoft enterprise license already includes the ability to use the newest software as soon as it's released. My understand is that the difference this time is the new enterprise license terms charge extra if you aren't using Office365. Microsoft is gaming their deployment numbers by exploiting licensing terms to force people to upgrade. This forced most large business to upgrade because it costs more not to. Now mind you they could have already upgraded without cost, the license change was simply to acc
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OK, that is clearer, thanks.
Sounds like in this case the businesses had already locked themselves in to some extent, presumably in exchange for significant discounts through enterprise licensing rather than buying individual copies, and now Microsoft is exploiting that lock-in to get its fingers deeper into the pie.
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After a certain number of licenses you can't buy any more without executing an enterprise license agreement, this is one of the terms in EULA. If you have 500 employees and you are buying your software a license at at time you're wasting money and likely in violation of the license.
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I really have to give Microsoft credit, figuring out a way to make people pay rent on something as simple as a word processor.
It's not just Microsoft though. Adobe does it too for their products, and others do too. They're all figuring out they can charge you many times the price of the software by getting you on a subscription. I always avoid subscriptions in general.
Music is the same way. How many hundreds of dollars are being thrown away by people on things like Spotify? Companies aren't stupid. They know if they can get you paying for the same product every month they make more money than just charging you once and most
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It's not the figuring out that surprises me but the fact that they don't die of shame doing this.
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The problem is not the Word processor. LibreOffice needs feature parity with Excel, As Excel is the major justification I hear many people have for staying with Office. And then after getting that TRUE feature parity, LibreOffice need to add some "killer app" functionality, like a better MS Access than MS Access, and a way to handle collaborative databases and cloud-hosted collaborative databases.
And then get a major marketing campaign to show how LibreOffice Does everything Excel does and mor
The 80/20 rule (Score:3)
Basically, everybody has that one cool feature they can't live without that their entire workflow is dependent on (spacebar heating anyone?). That's how Microsoft gets lock in. You can't leave without taking a major hit.
Office 365 lacks VBA (Score:2)
On PCs with Office installed, VBA is often the only programming language available.
Better than nothing for kids to play around with, like how they played around with QBASIC a generation ago.
Yes, you can create macros in LibreOffice too, but it's not as easy and performance is dog slow.
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Office 365 is more than word processing software. Office 365 also includes full hosted versions of SharePoint, intune, Skype for business, and Exchange and includes with subscription add ons crm like Dynamics and the Outlook Contact manager and cloud PBX for things like having dedicated numbers for phones and meetings under Skype from phones. With add ons businesses can also get intune, advanced threat protection, and exchange archiving for ediscovery and audits. Microsofts offers free technical support
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upgrade every year or two
Something absolutely unnecessary nowadays for 99.9% of the user base. Back when tech was young - hell yeah, you needed to upgrade constantly or you'd miss that critical new functionality. Now every few years brings marginal increments in "features" and very little new. Unless we're talking about that radical decision of making ALL THE MENUS IN CAPS...
My generation is the one that grew up with the constant upgrade drive. Fortunately (or not), we're starting to leave the workforce as we get older. Heck, do
Re:Absolutely baffling (Score:4, Interesting)
Way to out yourself as a child who's never actually worked in any kind of enterprise environment.
Oh really?
We just finished our Office 2016 rollout a few months ago here. It was mostly MS Office 2016 Standard with a smattering of Pro Plus just to make things interesting.
Our previous version? Office 2007, and that rollout in 2010 was a replacement for Office 2003. We will probably stick with Office 2016 for another 6-8 years so our next version will likely be Office 2025, assuming they still have a purchase option then.
Just because you're stuck in Software Assurance hell is no reason to assume that every small to medium sized business blindly follows Microsoft's upgrade cycle.
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NO, NO, a thousand times no.
odt is a iso standard, documented well enough that it will still be readable on 50 years time. mandatory for government documents in many countries whose politicians are not controlled by MS.
docx is so badly documented it barely works now, and is not actually fit for purpose.
Introduce public hanging and flogging for even mentioning docx. It is even more urgent than stabbing systemd in the back with a stone axe.
No surprise there (Score:2)
I ended up converting last year and it is actually a better deal all around. If you work in the business world you inevitably have to deal with MS Word documents and MS Excel spreadsheets and MS Powerpoint sludge.
What I like is that I can install multiple legal copies on different devices including family members.
Although it is an annual rent which is going to turn off a lot of people I now consider it a regular business related sense such as dry cleaning or a commute-capable car or for that matter taxes o
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
It is precisely THAT kind of thinking that is going to possibly eventually *doom* us all to perpetual, rental of software, rather than ownership (perpetual license if you're picky)...and that is NOT a good thing for consumers.
Once the companies have you trapped in rental..they really have no incentive to improve and innovate now do they?
We've seen it with Adobe's Creative Cloud rental system....you haven't seen any truly breakthrough improvements to date. Yes, they roll out some nice things here and there, but nothing that is earthshaking. I've certainly not found I miss anything by still using my CS6 apps I bought.
And we've seen problems with Adobe CC...they will roll stuff out that breaks on peoples systems, and well....you're SOL till they can get an online fix out, meanwhile, you lose business.
There are also people who've lost out by having their registration get lost in the system or broken, and again...they are SOL till customer service can help, and well, I think with most of these places we know the terms "customer service" and "help" are mutually exclusive terms.
I can see it going this way with ANY software rental.
The best way to avoid this is to pay with your wallet.
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Re: No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
and is equal or less in cost when amortized against one-off purchases of boxed software
Maybe if you're upgrading every year? Which we all know is completely unnecessary. Office 2016 Home & Student is $149 and Office 365 Personal is $6.99/mo. That means if you keep your office version for two years, it is cheaper to buy a boxed copy than pay for a subscription. No one would argue you could easily use the same version of Office for TWICE that period of time.
This is rent seeking, plain and simple. They're trying to structure it in such a way to increase your cost unnecessarily and force you to make purchases you wouldn't have otherwise needed.
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Once the companies have you trapped in rental..they really have no incentive to improve and innovate now do they?
I dislike it so much, that I think there should be a law against it. Something liek....
SQUATTERS RIGHTS ON SOFTWARE
If software or the right to the legal possession of software is included as a product or service, then after a consumer's use of that service and/or legal possession of that copy of software has continued for 12 calendar months without permanent cancellation or termination of th
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Good luck when tech companies inject so much money into politics through lobbyists and campaign contributions. (both secret and not-so-secret)
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Maybe this will help with stupid changes just to come out with new versions, then. I don't mind change, but lets face it, everyone hates freaking change. If it works and is making money, maybe they are just leaving it the hell alone?
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It is precisely THAT kind of thinking that is going to possibly eventually *doom* us all to perpetual, rental of software, rather than ownership (perpetual license if you're picky)...and that is NOT a good thing for consumers.
Once the companies have you trapped in rental..they really have no incentive to improve and innovate now do they?
We've seen it with Adobe's Creative Cloud rental system....you haven't seen any truly breakthrough improvements to date. Yes, they roll out some nice things here and there, but nothing that is earthshaking. I've certainly not found I miss anything by still using my CS6 apps I bought.
And we've seen problems with Adobe CC...they will roll stuff out that breaks on peoples systems, and well....you're SOL till they can get an online fix out, meanwhile, you lose business.
There are also people who've lost out by having their registration get lost in the system or broken, and again...they are SOL till customer service can help, and well, I think with most of these places we know the terms "customer service" and "help" are mutually exclusive terms.
I can see it going this way with ANY software rental.
The best way to avoid this is to pay with your wallet.
I'm fairly certain that Adobe software today would be utter crap regardless of it was a one-time purchase or as a recurring payment. They have been on that path for years, if not decades.
You get more than just the software (Score:2)
You and I are computer enthusiasts to some degree. Mo
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And I get to take the day off if I can't access the internet from my location. Where as with a traditional application I am forced to work even if reliable internet access is not available.
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay. I bought a retail boxed copy of Office 2010 Home some years ago. Let's say 2012, since otherwise it would be Office 2013. It specifically allows me to install it on multiple computers (three to five, I can't remember; I only have it one two). I don't remember exactly what I paid anymore, but let's pretend it was $150 (that's what a standalone copy costs now). That means I've had use of this software for five years at an amortized cost of $30/year. That cost per year continues going down every year that I still use 2010--and I will, because at the moment, I don't perceive that there have been any great advances in word processing technology in the last 7 years. The cost of Office 365 Home is $100 per year. That really doesn't sound like a better deal to me.
And if you want to be a smart grown up, you don't pay more for things than you need to, especially by paying over and over again for things you can just pay for once.
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And if you want to be a smart grown up, you don't pay more for things than you need to, especially by paying over and over again for things you can just pay for once.
Office 365 has a lot of features that Office 20xx did not have. You did not get 5TB of cloud storage with Office 20xx for one thing. Or online support. Or 60 minutes of Skype to landline calls per month. Or phone support. So to come up with a valid comparison you have to realize that the product+services of Office 365 is not the same as the product-only of an obsolete version of the software.
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Personally, 2010 was the best version for me and I plan to continue to use that as I've not found any new feature in 2013 or 2016 version that make me want to upgrade; in fact, I've found several new featur
It's a better deal if you're a non tech (Score:2)
It's kinda like being a mechanic and driving a Jaguar. You can get away with it when you can fix it on your own.
For me... (Score:2)
... I got Office 2007 Pro. from an estate sale almost a couple months ago. Before it and in the past, I was still using the very old 2K SR3 and 2003 from others who didn't use them anymore. They worked fine for my basic needs (Word and Excel) with their 2007 converter packs and updates. I also use the updated LibreOffice when needed too which is rare.
I hate the online cloud stuff especially when my Internet isn't reliable. Frak the online clouds and services. I still prefer to do stuff offline and locally!
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If you work in the business world you inevitably have to deal with MS Word documents and MS Excel spreadsheets and MS Powerpoint sludge.
This is a lot less true than it used to be. None of the day-to-day data that I deal with has been in any of those formats for a long time.
The sad thing is, it still only needs one or two exceptions -- say, exporting a spreadsheet to send to your accountant or a contract for review and markup by your lawyers -- to make it worth the cost of buying MS rather than risking data loss in translation. Fortunately, for us it's only things like legal/finance work where any avoidable risk is highly undesirable because
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From a business point of view, what it costs is just a business expense and is either worth it or it isn't.
The bigger reason we won't rent software for anything truly essential to our business operations is that it can be changed, made more expensive, or even entirely turned off, at any time, according to nothing but the whims of the software developer.
Your theory seems to be based on the idea that Microsoft will cut off their revenue stream from you for no purpose other than buggery and to piss you off. Sorry but I just don't find this very convincing.
I agree that the Microsoft suite is by no means as essential as it once was. This is actually a good thing because to keep Microsoft will then have pressure to improve the product rather than just relying on droits.
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It's a general principle, not specific to Microsoft. In any case, it's clear that Microsoft is quite willing to update its software in ways that its customers don't want and try to force them to adopt the changes, and life's too short to put up with that sort of abuse.
Re: No surprise there (Score:5, Interesting)
I explicitly convert everything down to a common standard.
Last time a legal department sent me a Signed PDF which wanted to open some JavaScript and talk to Adobe servers and then I should create an account with Adobe while Adobe held onto my public/private key for signing.
I opened the PDF in a non-Adobe product, saved and signed it with a copy of my real signature (which the app happily took from the camera), sent it back. It thoroughly broke their automatic processing but they went on with it (insert Johnny Tables reference here) because nobody at the office understood why it wasn't working (it looked like I signed it after all).
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I tend to agree, but since the legal systems in many countries still operate with the technical savvy of a 10th century monk, many lawyers couldn't change even if they wanted to, because they wouldn't then be compliant with the court-mandated formatting conventions for their documents.
But also, there's not really any denying that the familiar revision control features in software like Word are much easier for non-technical folks to use than the diff tools in a typical programmer's version control system.
It
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I ended up converting last year and it is actually a better deal all around. If you work in the business world you inevitably have to deal with MS Word documents and MS Excel spreadsheets and MS Powerpoint sludge.
No it isn't. It's just stupid. You can buy Office 2010 on ebay for what... $60 and own it forever. This is substantially less than one year rental cost of Office 365.
What of any meaningful value does Office 2010 not do that your 365 subscription can?
Although it is an annual rent which is going to turn off a lot of people I now consider it a regular business related sense such as dry cleaning or a commute-capable car or for that matter taxes on income. If you want to be a grown up there are things you have to pay for.
If you want to be a grown up you have to be able to do basic math. Paying more over time isn't smart or intelligent. It doesn't make you a grown up. It doesn't improve cash flow. It is simply throwing money away for no reason.
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If you assume Office 365 === Office 2010 then you might have a point about basic math. Office 365 comes with many features and services that you do not get with an one-time license to Office 2010.
Please list some of these features the average person can't live without. To me, 2013 was a step backwards in functionality and I've yet to find any new feature in 2013 that is worth the upgrade cost. I've looked at the new feature list for 2016 and again I can't find anything worth upgrading for.
I can say that 2013 introduced the "borderless window frames" that make it hard to resize the window. It also gave me changed options that make the various Office apps harder to use without having to track down h
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Please list some of these features the average person can't live without.
As I have written above, if it weren't for business I probably wouldn't bother with MS Office at all. I make no pretense for speaking for the "average" person but as the article states, a lot of people have opted for the Office 365 over the one-time license. Maybe that majority is the elite or maybe they represent the average. I don't care.
I have no interest in a pointless series of quibbles about whether this or that feature the added/removed/changed in one version to the next is desirable or not. Ther
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By the same reasoning, the extra cost to buy a Mac is well worth it for everyone, because it has features other computers don't have.
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> If you want to be a grown up there are things you have to pay for.
Only an idiot keeps paying for the same thing over and over again.
A real adult understands a) amortization, and b) sharing of knowledge.
a) In a few years a kid is able to learn almost the previous 4,000 years of Mathematics.
b) Likewise, by pooling our knowledge we are able to get Operating Systems and Applications for zero cost.
One day when you grow up you'll realize collaboration makes more sense then competition and artificial price go
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Buying low is good if you can find such a deal. Paying off the mortgage early isn't.
Right now, I owe a good deal of money on my mortgage, but the interest rate is significantly lower than my return on investments. (Tax considerations mean my actual return on investments is lower, but then so is the actual mortgage rate I pay, so it balances.) I'd be sacrificing money to pay it off early.
Not sure it will last... (Score:5, Interesting)
We switched to Office365 this month from 2010, and our end users are sick of it. They complain about re-authentication, along with bugs and other issues. Many people are switching back to our Google webmail instead.
For us, the price point is higher than where we want to be, given all the SaaS crap we are stuck with. I expect a defection inside a year.
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They complain about re-authentication, along with bugs and other issues.
How did you / your IT department manage to break it?
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You did it wrong.
Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. If their users are so unhappy with the change that they are making other arrangements, does it really matter? The result is still the same.
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We pay google and Microsoft slightly more than we would have for Microsoft alone, but we are not fully committEd to the MS absolution this way. Moving mail to MS would have been a painful process (total of about 1TB of mailboxes).
Truth be told, we did make some strategic mistakes that cost us some flexibility, but nothing too big.
Office365 is just a small hit; AutoDesk and Adobe (and engineering software) are where we spend real money.
Confirmed (Score:2)
Microsoft is irrelevant and dying.. oh wait..
if you don't like it, *donate* to LibreOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
If we want good, open, free alternatives, it helps a lot to donate to the projects.
I donate to Debian, KDE, LibreOffice, GnuPG, and more.
Even for OSS projects, being able to fund developers makes a big difference. Put your money where your mouth is. Stop giving money to Microsoft, start giving money to OSS. At least the latter will respect your rights (*) and not treat you as the enemy.
(*) insert systemd joke here.
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If we want good, open, free alternatives, it helps a lot to donate to the projects.
No it doesn't. The Office monopoly relies a lot on system integration with the rest of the business world. Lync, Outlook, Active Directory, Sharepoint, other DMS providers, integration with business software. For the MS side of the ecosystem no money is going to get them to open up those APIs to you. For the 3rd party side of the ecosystem only a huge user base will get them to open up to you.
Not a sign of MS growth per se (Score:2)
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Software "ownership" is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
That's the fear, but I'm not sure it's actually working out that way. It took what -- 2-3 years, maybe? -- from the Adobe CC switch for multiple credible competing products to be available for some of the big CS/CC applications. They aren't the same 800lb gorilla products, but rather like Google Docs compared to MS Office, they do enough for many users, and in some respects they might even be better.
Enterprise IT is often awful in terms of cost-effectiveness, because everything is worked out at a high level
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If they're foolish enough to pay through the nose and lock themselves into deals with specific software brands, so be it.
To be honest the reason we lock ourselves into large agreements is to guarantee large discounts. It's typically not in the businesses interest to use their resources to constantly switch between providers. You can't move several thousand (or even hundreds, and maybe dozens) people between different SaaS offerings every year or two. Not only does this tie up your internal IT resources, you've got to retrain staff which is very expensive.
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Sure, I understand that and it's a perfectly reasonable position if it genuinely does meet your business requirements better than any other available option. Presumably if and when you reached that "paying through the nose" stage, the balance would change and the costs of migrating to an alternative would look less prohibitive.
Unfortunately, while your reason is a good one, it is certainly not the only reason that big businesses lock themselves into these agreements. I've seen purchases made for corporate p
ownership... (Score:2)
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This is smoke and mirrors... (Score:3)
Here is how you make revenue for Office365 go up - change your pricing.
I would venture that most of this comes from companies. They simply bundle the two together, of course requiring that you buy both. Maybe your costs are the same, or maybe they go up a little, but the ratio is probably heavily weighted towards office365. Microsoft can then say the revenue for 365 goes up, traditional license revenue goes down. But you still have to have both. Maybe they can push just 365 on new clients, but i think that would be a hard sell.
Then once their subscription numbers are up, they can just let the client-version wither and die.
At work we have Office365, but everyone I know uses the traditional installed version. It is buggier than it used to be, because it has to phone-home to mothership365. Store docs to OneDrive, view them in the cloud (which I never really do), or log in and use the 365 calendar/outlook, which I try to avoid at all costs. Many many times Office applications will hang now that they are 'integrated' with 365.
Nobody will care about 365 until they take away the client version, then productivity will tank. By that time though, the frog will be boiled.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Economy (Score:2)
In other words (Score:2)
People investing in their own demise (Score:2)
There is of course LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org) as well as OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) and for those that want an internal intranet based solutions (or "cloud" on the open Internet) there is OnlyOffice (http://www.on
What happens if you stop paying? (Score:3, Interesting)
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It's called PR. If you write your PR release like a news article, some media companies will publish the PR under their own byline with a simple copy-and-paste and no further editing.
..which is how people think so-called 'AI' is actual 'AI', and that by extension so-called 'self driving cars' are actually going to be a good thing instead of a disaster.