Office 2010 or Office 2013 ? Help Me Decide

Phone Man said:

Clean installing Windows 10 and have both Office 2010 and Office 2013 available and your thoughts on which should I use. I have been running Office 2010 on my systems and mainly basic use of Word and Excel. Also x86 or x64?

If you ever need to work with two open spreadsheets at the same time, especially on a display without lots of pixels, Excel 2010's old 'MDI' style windows are more efficient at using screen space then 2013.

Gents, keep in mind that Office 2013 is sold in a different way from Office 2007/2010.

In the past, a single purchase of a DVD for Office 2007/2010 would grant you the access to THREE licenses PER box.

For Office 2013, you're only granted ONE license per DVD box. That means that for $150 (MSRP of Office "Home and Student" 2007/2010/2013), you're only getting one license while in the past you would get three.

This is an obvious attempt from Microsoft to get people to use their subscription service instead, Office 365. However, unless you're in need of Office in 3 or more computers, Office 365 is actually a rip off.

Keep this in mind while deciding...

hello,

I prefer Office 2013 (X64 here). Have Office 2010 also.

If Office 2010 was the better one, i would use that, but 2013 is the better one.

Jeff

Except of course that Office 2013 has NO help (unless you are connected to the internet). Office 2010 help is always there.

Dave

bobjoe said:

This is an obvious attempt from Microsoft to get people to use their subscription service instead, Office 365. However, unless you're in need of Office in 3 or more computers, Office 365 is actually a rip off.

I'm curious to hear why you think that Office 365 is a rip off. If you need Outlook, Publisher or Access you are into Office Professional and that's between $300 and $400 for a license. With Office 365, you get 5 copies of essentially Office Professional for $99 a year. You get it for the PC as well as the Mac. You get up to 5 users and each user gets 1TB of OneDrive space. You will always be on the latest version of Office, so when Office 2016 comes out, you don't have to buy and upgrade and you get free phone and chat support from Microsoft. And Microsoft also allows you to share your subscription with family and friends. So, if you split the $99 a year 5 ways, it's only $20 a year per install. That's damn cheap.

pparks1 said:

I'm curious to hear why you think that Office 365 is a rip off. If you need Outlook, Publisher or Access you are into Office Professional and that's between $300 and $400 for a license. With Office 365, you get 5 copies of essentially Office Professional for $99 a year. You get it for the PC as well as the Mac. You get up to 5 users and each user gets 1TB of OneDrive space. You will always be on the latest version of Office, so when Office 2016 comes out, you don't have to buy and upgrade and you get free phone and chat support from Microsoft. And Microsoft also allows you to share your subscription with family and friends. So, if you split the $99 a year 5 ways, it's only $20 a year per install. That's damn cheap.

If you're a family of 2, $100 a year is not cheap at all.

I'm not interested in OneDrive storage. I do not have a Microsoft Account and I use Dropbox for online storage.

Office Home and Business comes with Outlook, I believe, and it costs $220 MSRP.

After Office 2016, it will be at least 5 years until the next release. That means $500 spent on an Office 365 subscription. A lot more than just buying it once like in the past, don't you think?

Free phone support from Microsoft? LOL. Even if they paid me to use their support, I wouldn't bother. It's just outsourced, hard to understand, minimum wage employees in India. They're not exactly the best "customer support".

Like I said before, Office 2010 and 2007 came with 3 licenses per DVD box. In order to push their subscription service, Office 365, MSFT lowered the number of licenses to 1. It's a greedy move on their part.

But then again, it's Microsoft. What do you expect??

Thanks for all the replies. I am running 2010 on my main system and will try 2013 on my laptop and see how it does.

Jim

bobjoe said:

If you're a family of 2, $100 a year is not cheap at all.

Depends. Do you need Outlook on 2 computers? If so, that's at least Office 2013 Home and Office and that's ~$250 per copy, so $500 total. So, at $100 per year, it would take 5 years of paying for Office 365 to get to that cost of just that first purchase. With Office 365, you could decide 2 years into it that you don't need it anymore and hence save yourself $300 that you would have otherwise spent. And when new versions come out, you get it as part of 365, and you don't have to pay for an upgrade.

And if you ONLY need 2 copies, then you can sell the other 3 copies to some friends. $20 per copy per year is what it costs if you split it 5 ways. So, $40 for your needs.

bobjoe said:

not interested in OneDrive storage. I do not have a Microsoft Account and I use Dropbox for online storage.

I use DropBox too, but i only have 6GB of free space with dropbox. It costs $99 per year to get Dropbox Pro which gives you 1TB of space. So, if you spent $99 for DropBox Pro, you might as well buy Office 365 and get 5 copies of Office as well and up to 5TB of free One Drive space (1TB per 5 users).

bobjoe said:

Home and Business comes with Outlook, I believe, and it costs $220 MSRP.

If you needed 2 copies of Home and Business it would be $440. That's over 4 years of 365. And you get the free OneDrive space, thus eliminating having to pay for DropBox. And with Office 365, you get things like Publisher, and Access, etc. So it's more than just outlook. You get Skype minutes, support, etc.

bobjoe said:

Office 2016, it will be at least 5 years until the next release. That means $500 spent on an Office 365 subscription. A lot more than just buying it once like in the past, don't you think?

It's never been 5 years between office releases. Office 2003,2007,2010,2013,2016, etc. If you only need it for 1 computer, then you could save money with a traditional purchase. But most of us have multiple devices, and want to keep up to date. If you were buying legit copies of Office previously, Office 365 is likely going to be cheaper...or at least not much more expensive.

bobjoe said:

phone support from Microsoft? LOL. Even if they paid me to use their support, I wouldn't bother. It's just outsourced, hard to understand, minimum wage employees in India. They're not exactly the best "customer support".

It's better than the NOTHING you get with a traditional purchase. Even with business plans, support has often been "per incident".

bobjoe said:

I said before, Office 2010 and 2007 came with 3 licenses per DVD box. In order to push their subscription service, Office 365, MSFT lowered the number of licenses to 1. It's a greedy move on their part.

It's business. They are out to make money.

I'm all for Office 365. We are in the process of switching to it at work. Even at $52,000 a year, it's cheaper than it ever was for us to license office for 300 computers, and pay for Microsoft Exchange and cloud storage, etc.