Ms confirms - eventually Office to be subscription only

Hi there

Ms will now only provide Office /365 when both Office 2019 and Office 2016 expire in 2025. OK that's a long time away -- who knows if Ms won't have been swallowed up by Amazon, Alibaba, Google or whatever by then. !!

They readily admit they can make more money from recurring payments (i.e subscriptions) than selling a product. If "Leasing" was a bad business model (for businesses doing the leasing) then one has to ask why are so many businesses involved in leasing models -- e.g car leasing, aircraft leasing etc.

In the short term it makes sense -- you save capital etc and you might only want the product for a short time but in the long term it will always cost the Lessee i.e the person who leases the product more than by buying outright --just look at typical mobile phone contracts - average monthly stuff goes on long after you've paid for the handset -- the EU is finally getting in on this case that contracts should be reduced in price once the handset has been paid off. !!

The Office bit is particularly interesting as Ms will hobble any new stuff to Office 2019 and 2016 and after the expiry date it won't connect to any of their exchange servers.

For my own part - there's almost zero innovations in an office suite that I really need -- I don't need special panels - email to boss / group etc or add Instagram or whatever. The only thing I've found that I like is the pivot table extra stuff in EXCEL 2019 but there again I can easily manage without that.

As for Word and powerpoint - what does one really need "new features" for - they can all incorporate stuff from other parts of the office suite easily enough and making presentations on youtube etc can be added too if you need -- even to Office 2010.

As for email -- I'd have been quite happy with the old outlook express from XP days -- nothing wrong with it !! - and each office update with those automatic set up of email servers makes it actually harder to set up email if you have anything other than a bog standard email address with a known ISP server on Ms's database.

Woe betide you if you are hosting your own domains with your own email servers etc.

So I run now Outlook 2010 on some machines and Outlook 2019 on another (since I have a work license).

When that disappears I'm quite happy to stick with Outlook (and Office) 2010 until I drop dead - and if Windows won't run it any more I'll just keep it on a version of Windows that runs on a VM (Virtual Machine) - which will work until the end of the Universe. !!

To much "feature- itus" coming from Ms now -- just give us clean basic uncluttered OS and office suite without all this "collaboration, send mail to boss etc B/S". Once you can add multi-media to email it's simple anyway -- even Office 2010 allows attach file.

Cheers
jimbo

It also means you can't pass on your previous version to your nephew/aunt/whatever. There is no residual value in leasing.

I'll keep using Office 2010 Starter!

Opportunity for others, such as Kingsoft.

I liked the preview so I bought the cheap version!

Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to when Office 2016 will become hard or impossible to find at standard retail sources?

I might get 2016 when it starts to get rare, but the trouble is I can't recall ever having any kind of warning about when Office releases will become rare. They can disappear quickly with no warnings about "last chance".

I'm on Office 2010 now. I bought it in October 2013 and it was getting very hard to find then. I got the last "retail" copy at B and H Photo and had to buy the 3 license pack at that.

If I have to, I'll use 2010 until it literally won't run or install, never mind "support", rather than going with a subscription.

I'm a huge fan of Office365. It's literally a no-brainer for me. My reasoning might not fit your situation and I understand that. If you don't have a need for Office because OpenOffice/Libre Office/GoogleDocs, etc can fit the bill, then great. Or you own a previous version that still works and you don't have a need for the latest versions...that's great too.

For me, I don't pirate software. I've worked for software companies. So to get Microsoft Office, it's always going to cost me money. I've also always wanted Outlook, so the Home and Student versions haven't been sufficient for what I want. This puts me into the Office Professional product, which for Office 2019 is $439 (Your request appears to be from an automated process). And that is for 1 install of the software.

So, for $439 I can buy Office 2019 Professional outright and install it on my 1 PC. I also own a Mac that I would like to run it on. My wife has a laptop and could use Word and Excel. And my daughter has a Mac and my son has a PC. My costs are increasing dramatically here. So, let's say that I just bite the bullet and buy 2 copies. So, $439 x 2 = $878. So, tomorrow I can run my credit card and have an $878 payment hit my card immediately.

On the flip side, we have Office 365. With Office 365 for $99.99 a year, I get 6 accounts. So, with my family of 4, we all get accounts. I have 2 accounts left over that I can sell to a friend, or a family member. So, my dad could get Office365 for $20 a year from me, and that drops my cost to $79 a year. So, we both win.

All 6 of my accounts, get an UNLIMITED number of installs of office on an unlimited number of devices. The only catch is that they can only be signed in with their own personal account on 5 of those devices at one time. And they are getting the Office Professional version of the software. And it's for both Mac and for PC.

Now, all 6 of these accounts get 1TB of OneDrive space. So, that's 6TB of online cloud space. Historically I have been a DropBox user. To get 1TB of Dropbox per year, it's $99.99. That's the cost of Office 365 right there. So, essentially for the same cost as my 1 year of Dropbox, I get 5 more TB's as well as Office Professional on every device I own. This means Office 365 is almost a freebie for me.

So, if I buy 2 copies of Office 2019 Pro, it's $878 on day 1. And if I buy 1 TB of Dropbox, it's $99.99 more. So, it's now $977.99 on day 1. Then, it's only $99.99 for each additional year of Dropbox.

Or, I buy Office 365 for $99.99 on day 1. So that means I save $878 on day 1 over the above plan. Considering that both of my examples cost $99.99 for each subsequent year that means I NEVER BREAK EVEN.

And let's say at the end of year 2 (So office 365 is $99.99 per year x 2 = 199.98) that I no longer need Microsoft Office. If I had bought Office 2019 Pro for $439 for 1 copy, I'm still out $439 at the end of year 2. So, there wasn't any financial incentive to have purchased it in this example.

Thus, unless you pirate office, or only need exactly one copy of Office Home and Student, or have access to the Microsoft Home Use Program, Office 365 really makes a lot of sense.

pparks1 said:

Thus, unless you pirate office, or only need exactly one copy of Office Home and Student, or have access to the Microsoft Home Use Program, Office 365 really makes a lot of sense.

Don't think so - sounds more like you are justifying it to yourself.

Your arguement relies on paying $100 for Dropbox annually and assuming Outlook is worth the difference between $149 (Home and Student) and $439 for Pro.

The thing is for $249 you can get Office 2019 (Home and Business) and you get Outlook. Not sure why you'd pay $439 for Pro if you only want Outlook not all the other pointless stuff like Access, Publisher etc. That is $200 for nothing.

Maybe 365 is worth it for you if you have a family or many devices or you want the storage. Then again maybe it isn't. You are overstating your case slightly I feel by exaggerating the numbers.

We will all be forced into it in the end but I'm sticking with 2010 until people who I send documents to can't understand them.