Ms confirms - eventually Office to be subscription only

alphanumeric said:

I got enough product keys with my Visual Studio subscription to install it on all my personal computers with some left over. =)

I used to have licenses via my MSDN subscription. We revamped our subscriptions when it changed to Visual Studio and they downgraded us from the subscription that had Office included.

Since then, I have switched companies entirely and I support Linux, so I don't have any MS subscription these days. So, no free keys for me.

Superfly said:

......@Edwin decided.. well stuff that and went with the base version,......

Never bought Office before, the time seemed ripe!

Superfly said:

......OK..buts he's on mind altering stuff...as we know.. LOL

Yuppers!!! It's now legal here!!!

Hi there.

remember with subscriptions over the years the prices ALWAYS go up -- so what might seem ok now won't seem so cheap in a few years time.

Over any 10 year period Ms will make approx 800 USD MORE per subscriber via subscriptions (at current rates) rather than people who buy the software. True people *might* be able to make more by investing the diffrence between cost of subscription say in year 1 and the up front cost -- but I doubt that given the current state of the international stock market whether they would realize any gain -- it usn't a given that people can make money with other investments !!!!

cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

remember with subscriptions over the years the prices ALWAYS go up -- so what might seem ok now won't seem so cheap in a few years time.

Not always the case in modern times. Office365 was released back in 2011 and the price has remained the same, while the number of features and users has increased.

And just this past October they made some changes to the subscription to provide even more for the same price. It used to be 5 users who each could install Office on up to 5 PC's and 5 mobile devices who each got 1TB of disk space. As of October 2018, it's now 6 users who can install Office onto an unlimited number of devices but can only be signed into 5 of their personal devices at any one time using the software. Each of the 6 users gets 1TB of OneDrive space.
The same thing has happened with the cloud providers like Amazon Web Services. Over the years they have provided more features, faster performance all while decreasing the cost of their services to customers. Competition from the likes of Microsoft Azure has caused AWS to change billing to be more granular.

The good news is that none of these subscriptions require long term commitments. If you aren't comfortable paying for 1 year up front, you can always run month to month.

There is one born every minute.

SIW2 said:

There is one born every minute.

That's right, Microsoft brought me into this one hook, line and sinker. When I stopped being able to obtain Office for free from an MSDN subscription or a Technet subscription, and I realized that I still wanted the actual Microsoft Office suite to maintain the best compatibility with businesses that I was sending out resumes too, I looked into Office 365.

I could spend a few hundred dollars once and get a copy or 2 and be stuck with that version until I wanted to spend money again. Or I could spend $99 a year (which is less than 2 meals for my family) and i could get 5 terabytes of storage space on OneDrive and get the latest version of the Office suite on all of my devices with no hassles, or cd keys, etc. Considering that getting 1TB of space on either Google Drive, iCloud or Dropbox would have been costing me $100 a year anyway, going with Office365 was a no-brainer.

I signed up for Office 365 on November 5, 2017 and have been perfectly satisfied with my subscription. I'm renewing without a second thought this November for another year.

And I totally understand if you don't feel the need to pay for Office. You may not have a reason. Or 1 single copy is plenty enough for you. No big deal, do whatever works best for you. If you still have Office 2010 and you like it, don't change. You don't have to. If you however are just leary about subscription software, my experience has been good and I would recommend it to anybody.

Rental/leasing deals can be useful to some - in some circumstances.

For many situations, they are not desirable. It seems MS intends to push all customers into a rental model, gradually. That is not a good thing.