UK users?
No doubt that will be 'converted' to £99.
Microsoft has unveiled its first attempt to seduce consumers into paying subscription pricing for its Office 365 package. For $99.99 a year, buyers get the Office 365 Home Premium, which gives them a license to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access applications on five computers in the home. …
"I doubt there's enough interest in the extra bits from home users to sell many subscriptions at that rate."
Which is a missed opportunity. Had they bundled something like 100GB of cloud storage then I'd be in there. Probably other things would appeal to other users, but looks like they're spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar.
The extra bit is outlook, publisher, and access plus the skype calls and 5 licenses instead of the current 2010 3.
YMMV as to whether that's worth it for you, but around here(Oz), the price difference between Office Home and Office with Outlook is about $100 retail rate and you only get one license when you add outlook rather than 3 without it. The price with the other two products is even higher.
I'm not saying the price is worth it. Most home users don't need access or publisher and unless you've got an exchange server to hook it up to outlook is largely surplus to requirements. Five licenses instead of three is nice, though we won't really know whether home and student will end up with five for 2013 or not. If you need those extra things though and you plan on upgrading your office and you make skype phone calls, even the UK price is a steal.
Most home users don't need........publisher
In certain places, MS Publisher is pretty much de rigeur for school projects as it's simple to use and produces good results. I'd love to use the OO equivalent, but there isn't one.
Investigations into open-source alternatives have revealed that these fall into two categories. Either a full blown DTP package, which is waaaaay OTT for what's required and has a learning curve like the north face of the Eiger, or something simple but incompatible and shit.
Thus for the kids' homework, MS Office is a "must have". Something fairly compatible isn't good enough, as the transition between using Publisher at school and whatever-it-is at home has to be seamless, so the UI needs to be near as dammit identical.
Yeah, they recently switched to Euro currency pricing including in the UK - which some people got upset about on various sides of the deal. So now $1 of software indeed costs €1 in the EU. It used to be $1 = £1 way way back, so this is kind of better.
I think that remote desktop is explicitly ruled out for application sharing in the Windows licence I read last (Win 7), and elsewhere. VNC is probably illegal on Windows as well.
Are MS trying to kill their joke of a subscription model even before it starts?
£80 per year for a bloated, hard to use (thanks to TIFKAM influence) office suite containing a massive amount of crud that no sane home user is ever likely to want to use? Fine, it can be installed on up to five systems, but how many home users really care about that? To save money most are willing to have it on one or two system and leave the others as they are.
As a generalisation, home users don't care about Outlook, most use webmail these days as online mail services integrate well with mobile phones, attempting to use Outlook effectively ties you to MS mail services of some description. Publisher? Sane professionals don't use it, home users get by with Word. Next they'll be flogging powerpoint to home users... The home users that may want to use much of this software tend to want to use it for business purposes, which if you check the licence terms on this service is prohibited - it's for home, personal use only.
Now if MS were to provide something like a subscription service for just MS Word at £15 per year for home use only then they'd have a massive uptake. Unfortunately the greed has set in and they're more interested in foisting the rest of the MS Office suite at users and trying to get them locked into proprietary non interoperable software packages and systems than providing a good value service for end users.
You know, as a home user, I think this would make me look for alternatives. It's worth noting that home users are generally not as demanding as business users (when was the last time you saw home user with a marginally complex Excel doc?).
100 USD a year is just too much for what they are offering, which is to say a suite of tools which only gets used 5 times a year or so (for the average home user). If they want users to move to a subscription model (which they DESPERATELY need, as they are starting to have difficulties coming up with new improvements), then they need to get this into the cheap enough to not even be worth thinking about it range. I'd put that at 20 USD a year.
(YMMV)
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Agreed.
This is one of those situations where MS Office isn't the best choice IMO. In fact; although it may sound very cost effective at first you'll effectively end up paying (much) more in the longer run while you actually get a lot less functionality, esp. in comparison to other solutions.
Because if you keep that subscription for 2 years you're already paying much more than a single copy of the desktop version. And although the license of that desktop version doesn't allow multiple installations one could ask him- herself how many times it would happen when everyone will be working with Office at exactly the same time? Quite possibly the license could be shared.
But most of all; in comparison to the online variants of MS Office I think its safe to say that both LibreOffice as well as OpenOffice can featurewise blow it out of the water so to speak. For no additional costs at all.
I'd say people are actually better off with the open source variants in this scenario. Because if, for whatever reason, you do run into a situation where some of the more advantaged features could come in handy then you're pretty much screwed with Office 365. Its quite a decent product, but by far comparable to a desktop version featurewise. The open source variants otoh. do provide all you might need as a home users, even more, and for a lot less money too.
With plans like these I don't see Microsoft coming out on top. Too expensive while providing too little features.
Expecting people to spend $100 per year on a problem that was already solved 20 years ago? Really?
For most people it should be $50 and done, period.
Most people simply don't need Word Perfect style overkill. The only reason this is even remotely an issue is the perception that you need to be compatible and even that is being eroded by tablets.
Wrote :- "Most people simply don't need Word Perfect style overkill. "
And if I did I still have my old copy of WordPerfect and could get it to run too. I would have thought that nearly everyone with a PC has had a workable word processor at some time, enough for their needs. What do people do with this software - has it all rotted away?
"For $99.99 a year, buyers get the Office 365 Home Premium, which gives them a license to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access applications on five computers in the home. Subscribers also get 20GB of space on Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage system and 60 minutes worth of free Skype calls per month."
"If no payment is forthcoming, they will only be able to access their documents in read-only mode or via a printer"
My answer to this is to tell them to shove it up their arse, use Libre Office, and keep it all on your own hard drives.
"The biggest financial losers are those who purchase the Office Professional package. The $399.99 price tag converts to £254.1 or €296.64 at current rates, but the British will pay £389.99 and European counterparts get stung for €539.
It's not hard to see why open source office suites such as OpenOffice, and latterly LibreOffice, are proving so popular in Europe at the moment. US companies like Microsoft and Apple traditionally cite the higher costs of doing business across the pond as the reason for the price differential, but it's difficult to see how such high margins can be justified – in this hack's opinion, at least."
Microsoft = Gouge, Gouge, Gouge....... = Fuck them. Ripping you off = fucking them off.
and..........
"If they want users to move to a subscription model (which they DESPERATELY need, as they are starting to have difficulties coming up with new improvements), "
Improvements?
How do you top stupidity and grafting?
I know, lets change the packaging from 2013, to 2014 and double the prices!!!!
Smiley Face = Microsoft's best efforts sent me into the loving arms of Linux.
what they like, makes no odds to me. I just hope it supports ODF or earlier versions of Office file formats else wise all those people who use MS Office are not going to be able to open any documents I send to them.
Still that's their problem, just like opening proprietary standard documents in OO is my problem.
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"And with that attitude professionally you'll soon never have to send anyone a document again!"
You're right there, but for completely different reasons than you may realize. I think the OP makes a perfect argument, and lets not forget that we're talking about home usage here, NOT business use.
But about that sending... A few months ago a friend of mine setup a list of stuff (todo list) for me and a couple of other people. Basically the idea to 'share' some sort of knowledge base. Needless to say; in daily (work) life he's using MS Office but at home its all LibreOffice for him.
He didn't sent us any format at all; he sent us the URL of a text document which he put online using the Google tools. I clicked, and could view and edit. Even though I don't have a Google account (nor have any desire to get one).
To some extend you can always accomplish the same using SkyDrive (though I'm not 100% sure about that anymore considering the major changes MS made in this field recently).
My point: with the OP's attitude he doesn't even HAVE to send documents around. IMVHO.
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Crazy Prices. Considering anyone who can take advantage of the Home User Program can get their own copy of Office 2013 for £8.95 this is just nuts.
The next step in this shift to a subscription business model is to phase out the boxed/download product, which will make the free Office alternatives the only choice for people with more sense than money.
"anyone who can take advantage of the Home User Program can get their own copy of Office 2013 for £8.95 "
I think MS have noticed. My 80,000 employee organisation has withdrawn from the home user programme because they don't want to pay the costs (not disclosed) that are made for that. At a guess MS are ramping the HUP costs for business up in the hope of forcing home users onto a subscription.
"It's a source of not inconsiderable annoyance to many at Microsoft that home users typically buy one version of Office and then never upgrade it. After all, if all you want to do is write documents, do a very occasional PowerPoint or read an Excel spreadsheet from work then you really don’t need the latest all-singing, all-dancing version of Office."
"It's a source of not inconsiderable annoyance to many home users who typically buy one version of Office and then never upgrade it that Microsoft won't leave them alone, but drags them kicking into new, superior formats, newer, breakthrough ribbons, and other CRAP they neither need or even want.
100 bucks a year, whooaaa! 5 computers at home, all those eager beavers, dad, mom, their sprog, all sweating away at their desks. Is it a bargain or is it a bargain :(
I switched to OpenOffice years ago.
I just dont need the full MS suite on my home machine, the only time I need it is for work who happily gives me the oldest possible version.
The 60 minutes of Skype calls is interesting, but for that amount of money, you would expect more than 12 hours of free calls per year...
...also won't care when they are charged once per year and probably facing the prospect of Office 365 being canceled eventually, leaving them with a huge emigration problem.
If they did care about that, they wouldn't be considering Microsoft Office in the first place. They probably wouldn't be considering office products at all.
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@HolyFreaking whatever. Usable ? You're kidding. Best argument I have for OpenOffice and forks is that it works like software used for years. Users don't have to learn a different interface. The pain of going from office2003 to the horror of office 2010 put me off using any new application M$ offer at any price. It is annoying when document layouts are not correct, especially in tables, but there is a licenced PC running office97 around here for checking before sending if it matters.
IMHO, M$ have made it much easier for users to stick with the old versions, use converters or use something else.
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My wife has been happily using Office '97 for many years (still using it today). While Powerpoint feels a bit long in the tooth, and she doesn't use Access or Excel, Word 97 does all she needs to do - unless she needs to open a .docx or convert to PDF, and then she'll lean on conversion programs.
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http://docs.google.com Price: FREE
http://www.openoffice.org Price: FREE
http://www.kingsoftstore.com Price: FREE
http://www.libreoffice.org/ Price: FREE
http://symphony.lotus.com Price: FREE
http://www.oxygenofficepro.com Price: FREE
http://www.zoho.com/ Price: FREE
Some of them might not include things like macro languages, but how many home users use that??? ALL of those are suitable for 99.999% of home users. Sorry Microsoft, like Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Xbox, Surface and Zune, you are simply out of touch...
Standard documents, or microsoft standard documents? BIG difference.
I have never had a problem reading any word document, regardless of the version of MS Office it was written in. I use Google Docs (now Google Drive), and it just works, and the concurrent document editing and collaboration is superb.
I must say I'm surprised and grateful that Microsoft has put so much effort into maintaining it as a viable option (including the converters for docx formats), but not so much that I'd consider shelling out for a newer version.
Microsoft seem dazzled into paralysis by the revenues they get from Office (witness the agonising over Outlook for RT), but the days of being able to sell a mass market product with such huge margins isn't going to survive the tablet/app age.
I don't see, either, that many people will immediately think of a software suite they've traditionally used to create paper documents as being the obvious solution to their cloud collaboration needs (assuming they have any).
If they can't find a way of selling a consumer version of Office (or its subcomponents) at a few pounds a throw, there isn't going to be a "home" Office product line in future.
Well, considering you two tightwads are still using a version from 13 years ago, what choice do Microsoft have?
What would you like them do do? Keep patching Office 2000 ad infinitum and have no money for research and development?
I expect downvotes for this, but seriously, they gave you a decent Office product 13 years ago, it wouldn't hurt to buy a new copy would it?
Thank fuck I'm not in the software business.
"I expect downvotes for this, but seriously, they gave you a decent Office product 13 years ago, it wouldn't hurt to buy a new copy would it?"
No downvote here, but nevertheless - if a 13 year old piece of software is still doing everything that is required of it, and most likely much faster than when it was first purchased due to hardware improvements, why would anyone even think about buying a new version (assuming there's no must-have feature in the new version, which has been the case for years as far as I can tell). In fact recent versions of Office seem to have contained actual incentives to avoid upgrades (docx by default, ribbon...)
Not suggesting they should still be supporting 2000 now at all, but why should I be expected to 'up'grade if what I already have works just fine?
As for this subscription model for home users - well, good luck with that one MS. I suspect you'll need it.
More to the point, even though for power users Open Office/Libre Office might not be good enough, it staggers me how many people use a tiny fraction of Microsoft Office's functions, yet think they need it and only it. I would guess that at the very least 80% of home users would be able to use OO/LO just fine and I suspect tablets are making people realise just this in the shape of things like Google docs. So, MS trying to charge a subscription, a fecking subscription, strikes me as being utter insanity. I seriously think Microsoft are making some insane decisions at the moment.