Microsoft tries to sell home Office users on subscription pricing

Sources of annoyance.

It's a source of not inconsiderable annoyance to many at Microsoft that home users typically buy one version of Office

To judge by their attitude and behaviour, it's a source of not inconsiderable annoyance to MS (and many other large corporations) that they can't just legally take all our money for nothing at all and enserf us to boot.

OEM MS Office

I've been caught out with MS Office a few times when a user's PC needed a new motherboard. MS Office detects the change and requires reactivation. On some versions that means finding an install CD of the right version of Office. However OEM versions are more troublesome - even if you had the foresight to do a key retrieval before rebuilding the system. The OEM licence limits the install to the original hardware - and won't accept the activation key for a re-activation or re-installation if it has changed.

Next time that happens the user is going to get Open Office instead.

If you use office at work, work from home

I think Office is pretty much mandatory, at least if you're working complex documents and spreadsheets. If you just need an office app for simple stuff (letters, short reports, a bit of number crunching) then Google Docs will do. For most home users, MS Office is going to be overkill.

Never underestimate the IQ of MS Office users

Especially the PowerPoint warriors.

document fails in a completely different environment = LibreOffice problem how?

" they e-mailed it to me and it took two minutes and 20 seconds to open in LibreOffice -- it opens instantly in MS Office -- and it was messed up -- which it wouldn't be in MS Office -- and I had to go in the work to fix it (I was supposed to be off today)."

Speaking of idiots (and worse), which you were, you don't suppose some idiot had intentionally or otherwise endowed that spreadsheet with a whole load of links to other content, links which work in the office but don't work at home because the linked contents aren't accessible from home? Links which will each take a TCP/IP connect fail timeout before the connect finally fails? Links whose contents are relied upon for part of the main document's formatting?

I've seen exactly this happen. Now I'm not suggesting that it's the only option here, but if it were to be the case here (and you haven't said how you know it isn't the case), would it be LibreOffice's fault, or would there be a problem between keyboard and chair?

Anyway, enjoy the overtime. And/or ask your IT department to get you a proper VPN that works so that your office documents are visible from your home just like they are from the office.

I am still on Office 2007 (free licensed copy given by my workplace)

Works like a charm after all the service packs, and does everything I want.

Now, pray tell, why should I *pay a monthly subscription fee* for office productivity? Why should companies do the same thing?

Why should I even upgrade to Office 2010?

Sorry, Microsoft. This will flop badly.

What you should have done was:

1) Offer Office 365 free and full-functioned.

2) Slash prices of Office 2007 and Office 2010.

3) Sell subscription on massive Skydrive storage: 100Gb or 1Tb

wtf?

Home users should not pay hundreds of pounds for software that can literally be substituted with any of hundreds of free alternatives. If I find out you are an Office subscriber, that to me is a good indication that your brain was not properly formed. Your mum probably denied you breast milk and fed you MSG every day.

Google Docs

I've found Google Docs does just fine for me. As a personal user the cost is zero including a reasonable amount of on-line storage. I just don't need the MS Office Bloatware with its hundreds of unwanted bells and whistles.

Trial Version

The trial (which we were going to check out at work today) gives you free access to 365 for a month.... But they still want payment details before you sign up. Oh, you can cancel at any time of course, and you won't get charged if you cancel before the end of the trial.

How many people do you reckon will sign up to check it out, then forget to cancel the subscription?

It's just the wrong price

Microsoft's strategy is to make the non-subscription package seem like poor value, so they have denigrated the non sub package. Now with the home and student pack you only get one licence, tied to a single machine.

That's right - even the retail copy is not transferable. Trouble is I don't have any real use for the bells and whistles of 365 home premium - don't want Publisher, Access or Outlook, and barely want Powerpoint, and the 20gb of Skydrive is irrelevant given the free alternatives. If they were asking £40 a year it might seem just worth it ... but as it is they just seem out of touch with the market. No business ever thrived by offering customers no added value for more money: for most home users Office 2010 is simply a better deal. Meanwhile LibreOffice and Apache Office are dicking around with their antiquated UIs, but over the next 12 months perhaps that will change, and there will be a free Office suite that does more than Microsoft Office ... I've been using LO and Office for the last couple of years and while the latter is certainly far more refined, in other ways LO is functionally better, and it's hard to argue with "free". I hope Microsoft wakes up, but if it doesn't this cash cow is surely going to die.

BTW I bought Office 2010 in November so am entitled to a "free upgrade". But funnily enough the upgrade server has crashed all evening ... so that's a good argument for the cloud then...

It was very interesting reading about Word but ...

I actually use Scrivener. Admittedly I wouldn't roll this out around the company but I find I can do just anything I ever wanted to do with it.

I know it's a bit of a left field suggestion for some people now that I've switched I'm very happy. And it's comparatively cheap.

As for the whole Office suite question.

In my company we're being more-or-less forced to upgrade from Office 2003 now because of document compatibility issues with clients. It's frustrating - especially as the staff do not have the technical expertise to understand what is going on.

There's no way we would roll out an Open Office solution to the people here. They just wouldn't cope. I've never found a satisfactory way to rejig a flavour of OO so that it 'looked and behaved" like MS Office - if anyone has a suggestion I'd be pleased to hear it.

last version I purchased was '97, been using star/open/libre office since then. Dropped the last install of Windows last Summer and moved totally to Open Suse.

No interest in a subscription... no interest in Cloud either which is fine till your shaky BT line throws a moody and shuts off the outside world.

I want my stuff outright... and I want it on my machine.. I know that doesn't fit with the future cash generation plans of big biz.. but thats their issue not mine. Its bad enough being on the eternal upgrade cycle, but the predatory pricing that abuses exchange differences really takes the ****

What is needed is for business to actually bite the bullet and defect to open source en masse instead of suckling at the abusive teat of redmond

Cue the downvotes from the redmond shills

this will never work

as the article mentions: most people dont upgrade. How are MS going to stop people using office 2007 and start using this? The only thing i can think of is to spike 2007 with a dodgy upgrade, and if that got discovered MS would be in a world of pain.

MS are too late to the party....again