Windows 10: 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

:)

 

Free MS Office Alternative

You can run simplified cloud versions of MS office from any pc.

 

Time to update MS Office

A useful rule of thumb: buy MS products from MS.

And there's no cheap way. It is free for mobile devices/tablets but with limitations.

Subscription version of the suite (Office 365 Personal) is about £60/$70 per year which kinda sucks.

I was talking about 2016 btw

 

Time to update MS Office

I won't argue with the knowing where everything is. But I do enjoy a lot of the new additions from 2007 and later.

I won't ever go the way of the subscription based version. That's why I've avoided 365.

When I got my copy of 2003, it was right after 2007 released. I got a Student copy of 2003 off newegg for cheap - was around $50. I was hoping I could find something similar with 2010. I don't expect to find anything real cheap for 2013, but I want to keep my options open.

Thanks for the replies/suggestions so far.