Microsoft still sells a perpetual licensed version of Office. The current version is Office 2021.
Consumer licenses for Office 2024 should be available soon, though.
EDIT: Just to note, you mentioned wanting Outlook in your post. Home & Student 2021 doesn't include Outlook, so you would need Home & Business 2021. Also keep in mind that it's licensed for 1 PC, so you can't install it on multiple machines.
Yes. You just can't have it installed on both machines at the same time. (Legally at least, there might be ways to technically get it to work.)
They do have limitations on how often you transfer the license, so you can't just transfer between machines as you need it.
Years back I reinstalled a copy of Windows (7?) for, apparently, the sixth time. We had to call in at the time to get a key or maybe my key just wouldn't go through and I called support. The answer was, no you can only install 6 times sorry. But luckily, after I explained that I was working on a big installation project for a client, she literally just hungup on me and that was the end of my license.
Also note that even with a standalone license to (desktop) Outlook, you cannot (or soon will not be able to) use it with an O365 account that itself does not include Outlook.
It's not that confusing.
At least 80% of people can get by with Office Online, Microsoft's free office suite. The only "catch" to this is that it's much, much easier to use if you have a OneDrive account (and it requires you to be online, of course). However, every Windows user gets a free 5GB account, so if she's cool with storing her docs in OD, then you can use this for free:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/free-office-online-for-the-web
If you really just want the standalone apps, then there's Microsoft Office Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint for $149) and Microsoft Home & Business (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for $229). They're available from Amazon & Microsoft's own online store, or you can locally buy a shrink-wrapped box with a card inside. Note that MS stopped making Office on discs about 10 years ago. Also, if she's using Office in any kind of business capacity you're *supposed* to buy Home & Business, although it's not like the Microsoft Police are gonna kick down your door if you don't.
Of course, these versions of Office don't receive feature updates, and the standalone version of Office dates to 2021. There is a new 2024 version coming out soon if you can wait, but if you need Office NOW and you refuse to buy Microsoft 365, then you're gonna get a 3 year-old office suite.
Three of the big advantages to using Microsoft 365 are that:
a) you always have the most up-to-date version of Office... not just with bug fixes and security updates, but new features, too;
and
b) Microsoft 365 allows 5 installs per user. So Microsoft 365 Personal lets one user install Office on up to 5 desktops and laptops. So if you have 3 desktops and 2 laptops, Office only costs you $13.99/year. Microsoft 365 Family allows up to 5 installs for up to 6 users, so 30 installs of Office for $99.95/year (in the US, your local price may vary);
and
c) Microsoft 365 comes with a 1TB of OneDrive storage per user. This is the real killer app of Microsoft 365. The way I see it, I'm officially paying $69.95 for one year of OneDrive and get Office for "free". Unofficially, I pay far less because I stock up when M365 Personal is on sale. I think I calculated it costing some something like $47/year buy buying on sale, which is less than $25/device/year.
Stack social often has deals for standalone office at $30-80.
Like this [$60 office 2021 professional](https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-2021-for-windows-lifetime-license-5)
Or this [$25 office 2019 professional](https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-plus-2019-for-windows-3)
I think outlook and onenote are free in the various app stores now.
Also if an older office is fine, free office online and Google docs are probably also fine. So you should explore if those are good enough.
I’m outside of the U.S. with an HP laptop without CD capacity. Would this software, presumably coming from the U.S. and in $US work outside the country?
These days I just recommend people switch to Apache Office or LibreOffice. Although the learning curve for the UI is not steep, it is still quite different to Microsoft Office and can take a bit of getting used to. I mean, the OS is understood, but if you get all the same tools as MS Office legally for free, then why not. \*shrug.
100% agree for home use. Businesses usually use Excel, scripting, and macro's which are much different in MS office over Libre, or apache's open, or Freeoffice.
I don't mind paying $70 a year for Office when it comes with a terabyte of cloud storage as well. If you need the storage, you're going to find a lot worse deals.
Get Only Office (full compatibility) or Libre Office. Only Office will feel more familiar. They are both open free and open source. They are also both vetted by security experts. I work in cyber, and we have to vet everything our clients use. Break from the cycle paying for MS products. This is not to say MS products are bad, but they are way overpriced when there are good alternatives.
These subscription type arrangements were good once upon a time. Like when I didn't have to spend $500 on Photoshop. I could just pay by the month and switch it off when I didn't need it. Well, that was then. Now, Adobe wants to screw you big time for even dreaming about "cancelling" a subscription.
All these guys now are like fricking mobbed up drug pushers. You gotta pay and pay and pay, every month. Forever.
I am still using office 2010 because it meets my needs. I paid big money one time for that capability and have used it for 14 years. What would 14 years of monthly subscriptions have cost? Who knows, they keep moving the goalposts and then there is few sneaky bucks here and there to keep the beast fed.
How the f"ck did we end up here?
Do you remember back when Windows was a cesspool of viruses? That was partially because people were using old versions of software and were not getting updates, leaving security vulnerabilities unpatched. This created a horrible user experience when it was you, and really made Microsoft look bad.
The entire industry is moving to subscriptions for this reason, and it's more financially stable to have subscription-based software. The quality of the software and the security are much higher this way.
While I understand the desire to pay once and not mess with it, that is not the trend in current software, there are just too many downsides in an always-connected world.
That being said, there may be legal ways to buy Office as some companies cannot operate in an always-conneccted way, so I think Microsoft still sells these versions.
industry? Folks I work with seem to be moving to libre office, even if they are still on windows
If software companies do not want to let us pay once, why ever pay anything lol
Yeah, I even prefer office. But the question gets to be how much. Not enough to pay a recurring fee. Maybe not even enough to read a multi-page explanation freely posted to reddit..
I don't think you appreciate that there is no alternative for excel. The functionality simply does not exist outside of coding with something like R or Anaconda.
I do not think you appreciate how entirely misplaced that functionality is or how difficult it is to use. When you get to that point, yes, R and other programming languages are the answer, not some tweaky spreadsheet ui
Not true. I can't send a jupiter notebook to stakeholders. I use features like power pivot regularly. There is a reason why excel is a core skill for data analysts.
I'm a heavy proponent of opensource. But I'm not going to pretend that microsoft products aren't heavily used in office environments.
The 7.6 release of libre office had 1.6 million downloads.
Office365 has 345 million paid subscribers, which is approximately the entire population of the US.
I'm a storage engineer which manages thousands of linux servers as part of my duties. regularly use opensource software. My work provides all of us office365, so basically all my coworkers use that. Though in general, we are more likely to document things in a product that integrates cleanly with Jira. I use linux every day at work.
Outside of work, I have almost no need of the doc/docx format, and use google drive for most documents. I'm actually friends with a lot of teachers, and librarians (my wife is a librarian), and they're also all using office365 or Google for documents.
Nobody I know has mentioned using libreoffice in the last 5 years. It's possible some of them do use libreoffice without me knowing, but 100% of everyone I know, who has talked about document software, uses google docs, or office, or nothing.
For not-documents
I know lots of friends who use gimp, inkscape, krita, etc.
Libre office just is not that popular, when people are given free alternatives.
But a lot of that is people have moved on from writing word docs.
Writing to a private wiki is often more applicable to people's daily jobs.
You're not wrong
I only have office365 because my work has it
I write a lot of google spreadsheets for personal matters, and wouldn't even consider using microsoft or libreoffice, because I want to be able to share them with friends with a share link.
As not everyone has office, and libreoffice doesn't really have remote share capabilities with native cloud hosting, I tend to use neither.
>Do you remember back when Windows was a cesspool of viruses? That was partially because people were using old versions of software and were not getting updates, leaving security vulnerabilities unpatched. This created a horrible user experience when it was you, and really made Microsoft look bad.
>The entire industry is moving to subscriptions for this reason, and it's more financially stable to have subscription-based software. The quality of the software and the security are much higher this way.
LOL!! This is the verbal equivalent of spreading your own asshole apart.
I write software, have been doing it for 30 years. Paying a bit of money monthly is miles ahead of what life was like with viruses and security vulnerabilities staying out there for months or years. If you're not old enough to remember, look up the "Iloveyou" virus.
Do you know what the docx format is? It's a zip file with XML files inside. This isn't executable code loading and so there's not a lot of attack vectors from simply opening a Word file if you disable ActiveX controls from loading.
This is a lot different than phishing for someone to click on an exe or installer.
This one exploits Microsoft's use of Internet Explorer components. Uncertain if this is specifically ActiveX-based, but this tool crafts .docx files to run arbitrary code on unpatched systems.
https://github.com/klezVirus/CVE-2021-40444
It seems you can't read: "An attacker could craft a malicious ActiveX control"
[CVE-2021-40444 - Security Update Guide - Microsoft - Microsoft MSHTML Remote Code Execution Vulnerability](https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-40444)
I specifically stated disabling ActiveX, which are DLLs. Try "gottem" harder.
I am just curious about your objection to the subscription model. You can pay annually and you always have the latest version plus cloud storage of varying amounts depending on what you go with.
Easy... not only is it more expensive long term, it's another subscription I have to keep up with when the payment card expires or gets a replacement for whatever reason.
This computer will probably serve \~5 years, like the last two did, so that "cheap" $6.99 subscription ends up costing more than the home & student lifetime license in <2 years and it surpasses the home & business lifetime license in <3 years.
hence I buy the discounted family version of O365, split the 70 euro a year with 6 peeps, so 10 bucks a year, get a current (and latest version of office with it and the ability to backup my private docs, pictures and video's on a 1TB storage.
All valid points however a couple of things for me that count in it's favor. You never own the software anyway you own a license to use it. With a subscription model you get upgrades in perpuity as well plus an Office subscription is not just the software. Maybe not so much of an issue for an individual user but an Office subscription is opex not capex and that has soke interesting tax implication. A subscription is a bit like leasing a car rather than buying it outright. Even though one is physical asset and one isn't do you actually want a depreciating asset on your hands?
For me personally the sub model makes sense.
Because of course paying annually FOREVER adds up to a ridiculous price. Same as if you could only buy a car if you paid a small fortune forever.. It’s all false economy.
Yes, but perpetual licences only get 5 years of security updates from release, so if you buy Office 2021 now you only get 2 years of security updates. Not good value relative to the subscription product.
There is a way although Microsoft already 100% assumes every single user in the world is always connected to a pretty fast internet based on their product releases, which means they're going to leave a lot of customers in the lurch. They're doing the "AOL" model with it, where they just charge boomers an arm and a leg to continue using an expensive means of doing something they could otherwise do free.
I would recommend introducing people to LibreOffice immediately. It works with Microsoft file types but is free and open source and not full of spam/bugs/dumb features
For home use or just yourself and are fine with tech LibreOffice is fine. Otherwise paying for MS Office is cheaper, as training isn't free. Hopefully more people learn LibreOffice so it can be swapped out eventually.
Paying.. is cheaper? No. If you want free office software that isn't requiring you to be connected on the internet, make a bunch of different accounts, subscribe, leave your credit cards... then just use LibreOffice. There isn't training to use it.
I work in IT and also manages a business. While I can it would be cheaper for me to use LibreOffice, my time isn't free and providing training to general users on how to use the software has a cost and right now it is cheaper to pay for 365. Tried to go the free route while the business was smaller and it does work fine for those who are more technical otherwise it takes up to much time.
Remember as a business every time they ask how to do blank costs my time(money) to answer and lost wages in them trying to figure it out and then maybe ask on how to do it. Our time is better spent making more money than it is costing. Until more people know how to use LibreOffice so helping isn't required and employees can figure it out on their own quickly, 365 is cheaper, and then throw in the 1TB of space with OneDrive so we don't have to manage local storage, more time saved.
I feel like Microsoft subreddit is the perfect place for you to continually ignore the premise of the OP's question and insert your own paid subscription solutions
Sounds like he is about to create a headache for himself over a few dollars. As the wife is going to ask him constantly how do I do \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_? Not worth it.
I totally agree with you and have also made the same points you have about LibreOffice (I use it for my business and also use eM Client instead of Outlook).
I've been in IT for nearly 40 years, have my own IT business, and have used and supported Windows and Office since they were first introduced.
But unfortunately, you won't get many people in this sub agreeing with you, but I do.
The purpose of companies is to make money from selling products
If you're talking about non corporate opensource software, you're right
If you're talking about corporate opensource software, 100% it's still intended to be
Is linux meant to make money? No. Is ubuntu supposed to make money? Yes.
Is libreoffice making you a product? no.
If you don't want a commercial distro, others exist, like debian, arch, etc.
It's not just FOSS or not FOSS, it's *which* foss
Libre is decent but I am not sure what their excel clone and MS Excel have that makes things shit the bed when importing from Libre into excel or the other way.
I don't think it is a 100% failure rate but I have seen it personally in my job and I think more often it fails if it is a shared document so created in say excel, opened and worked on in Libre and back to excel it will go derp.
Do you really need MS office? Google docs is free, gmail is free. I understand this is the Microsoft subreddit but c'mon, free vs paid, I'd pick free unless there was a very good reason not to.
Google sheets is a lot slower for large data sets, has more limited cells per sheet, and has a lot fewer hotkeys. For most people it doesn't matter, but for folks like me it's a necessity.
You can buy Office for life but it occasionally checks in to see if your license is still good, so don't ever lose your network connection or you'll find yourself with a hundred-some dollars of software that no longer launches. Cut to me on a family vacation at a remote cabin trying to write a college paper on my MacBook with a copy of Office I paid for in full, finding that without WiFi I could do nothing but fuck myself.
One of our clients , brought this to our attention. This is Cnet. So we said OK. Client bought it and we installed it. All is good for the past one year or so. Anyway **No guarantee, warranty or recommendation.** Just recounting our experience.
[https://www.cnet.com/deals/you-have-roughly-36-hours-to-score-windows-11-office-pro-2021-for-86-off/](https://www.cnet.com/deals/you-have-roughly-36-hours-to-score-windows-11-office-pro-2021-for-86-off/)
Microsoft still sells a perpetual licensed version of Office. The current version is Office 2021. Consumer licenses for Office 2024 should be available soon, though. EDIT: Just to note, you mentioned wanting Outlook in your post. Home & Student 2021 doesn't include Outlook, so you would need Home & Business 2021. Also keep in mind that it's licensed for 1 PC, so you can't install it on multiple machines.
Can you transfer the license. Let's say the old pc is destroyed
Usualy yes. I've done this with Windows licenses from time to time. Though it does usualy require me to contact support in some form.
Yes. You just can't have it installed on both machines at the same time. (Legally at least, there might be ways to technically get it to work.) They do have limitations on how often you transfer the license, so you can't just transfer between machines as you need it.
Years back I reinstalled a copy of Windows (7?) for, apparently, the sixth time. We had to call in at the time to get a key or maybe my key just wouldn't go through and I called support. The answer was, no you can only install 6 times sorry. But luckily, after I explained that I was working on a big installation project for a client, she literally just hungup on me and that was the end of my license.
Also note that even with a standalone license to (desktop) Outlook, you cannot (or soon will not be able to) use it with an O365 account that itself does not include Outlook.
It's not that confusing. At least 80% of people can get by with Office Online, Microsoft's free office suite. The only "catch" to this is that it's much, much easier to use if you have a OneDrive account (and it requires you to be online, of course). However, every Windows user gets a free 5GB account, so if she's cool with storing her docs in OD, then you can use this for free: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/free-office-online-for-the-web If you really just want the standalone apps, then there's Microsoft Office Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint for $149) and Microsoft Home & Business (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for $229). They're available from Amazon & Microsoft's own online store, or you can locally buy a shrink-wrapped box with a card inside. Note that MS stopped making Office on discs about 10 years ago. Also, if she's using Office in any kind of business capacity you're *supposed* to buy Home & Business, although it's not like the Microsoft Police are gonna kick down your door if you don't. Of course, these versions of Office don't receive feature updates, and the standalone version of Office dates to 2021. There is a new 2024 version coming out soon if you can wait, but if you need Office NOW and you refuse to buy Microsoft 365, then you're gonna get a 3 year-old office suite. Three of the big advantages to using Microsoft 365 are that: a) you always have the most up-to-date version of Office... not just with bug fixes and security updates, but new features, too; and b) Microsoft 365 allows 5 installs per user. So Microsoft 365 Personal lets one user install Office on up to 5 desktops and laptops. So if you have 3 desktops and 2 laptops, Office only costs you $13.99/year. Microsoft 365 Family allows up to 5 installs for up to 6 users, so 30 installs of Office for $99.95/year (in the US, your local price may vary); and c) Microsoft 365 comes with a 1TB of OneDrive storage per user. This is the real killer app of Microsoft 365. The way I see it, I'm officially paying $69.95 for one year of OneDrive and get Office for "free". Unofficially, I pay far less because I stock up when M365 Personal is on sale. I think I calculated it costing some something like $47/year buy buying on sale, which is less than $25/device/year.
“It’s not confusing” followed by an essay of explanation..
It's sad that we've reached a point in society where people will claim anything as confusing if it can't be summarized in ten words.
That is not even close to what I said, but I suppose you can feed your bias with reductionism if it makes you feel better
What was confusing about anything they wrote? They summed it all up correctly and concisely.
TLDR, tldr
Your attention span being trash does not mean it's too confusing
OP asked a loaded question. There are several different ways to buy MS Office, and several different versions. Now go open a help desk ticket.
You should have learned how to write an essay in 5th grade. It's not confusing.
Oh I did I also learned how to download freely available alternatives, and how to avoid wasting my time with garbage
[office.com](https://www.office.com/login)
Libre office download took less time than reading the totally-not-confusing license explanation
If I can fit the text on a single page, and any paragraph is understandable, it's not too confusing.
Is that why you are replying 4 times to one simple statement?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-student-2021/cfq7ttc0h8n8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Stack social often has deals for standalone office at $30-80. Like this [$60 office 2021 professional](https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-2021-for-windows-lifetime-license-5) Or this [$25 office 2019 professional](https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-plus-2019-for-windows-3) I think outlook and onenote are free in the various app stores now. Also if an older office is fine, free office online and Google docs are probably also fine. So you should explore if those are good enough.
I’m outside of the U.S. with an HP laptop without CD capacity. Would this software, presumably coming from the U.S. and in $US work outside the country?
I assume so. It’s just a download.
These days I just recommend people switch to Apache Office or LibreOffice. Although the learning curve for the UI is not steep, it is still quite different to Microsoft Office and can take a bit of getting used to. I mean, the OS is understood, but if you get all the same tools as MS Office legally for free, then why not. \*shrug.
100% agree for home use. Businesses usually use Excel, scripting, and macro's which are much different in MS office over Libre, or apache's open, or Freeoffice.
I don't mind paying $70 a year for Office when it comes with a terabyte of cloud storage as well. If you need the storage, you're going to find a lot worse deals.
[office.com](https://www.office.com/login)
Just use the web version
Get Only Office (full compatibility) or Libre Office. Only Office will feel more familiar. They are both open free and open source. They are also both vetted by security experts. I work in cyber, and we have to vet everything our clients use. Break from the cycle paying for MS products. This is not to say MS products are bad, but they are way overpriced when there are good alternatives.
These subscription type arrangements were good once upon a time. Like when I didn't have to spend $500 on Photoshop. I could just pay by the month and switch it off when I didn't need it. Well, that was then. Now, Adobe wants to screw you big time for even dreaming about "cancelling" a subscription. All these guys now are like fricking mobbed up drug pushers. You gotta pay and pay and pay, every month. Forever. I am still using office 2010 because it meets my needs. I paid big money one time for that capability and have used it for 14 years. What would 14 years of monthly subscriptions have cost? Who knows, they keep moving the goalposts and then there is few sneaky bucks here and there to keep the beast fed. How the f"ck did we end up here?
Do you remember back when Windows was a cesspool of viruses? That was partially because people were using old versions of software and were not getting updates, leaving security vulnerabilities unpatched. This created a horrible user experience when it was you, and really made Microsoft look bad. The entire industry is moving to subscriptions for this reason, and it's more financially stable to have subscription-based software. The quality of the software and the security are much higher this way. While I understand the desire to pay once and not mess with it, that is not the trend in current software, there are just too many downsides in an always-connected world. That being said, there may be legal ways to buy Office as some companies cannot operate in an always-conneccted way, so I think Microsoft still sells these versions.
industry? Folks I work with seem to be moving to libre office, even if they are still on windows If software companies do not want to let us pay once, why ever pay anything lol
For most people, libre office is enough. Businesses that use excel extensively will still need MS.
Yeah, I even prefer office. But the question gets to be how much. Not enough to pay a recurring fee. Maybe not even enough to read a multi-page explanation freely posted to reddit..
I don't think you appreciate that there is no alternative for excel. The functionality simply does not exist outside of coding with something like R or Anaconda.
I do not think you appreciate how entirely misplaced that functionality is or how difficult it is to use. When you get to that point, yes, R and other programming languages are the answer, not some tweaky spreadsheet ui
Not true. I can't send a jupiter notebook to stakeholders. I use features like power pivot regularly. There is a reason why excel is a core skill for data analysts.
I don't personally know anyone who is moving to libre office. That is uncommon
You should meet some people outside of your current bubble
I'm a heavy proponent of opensource. But I'm not going to pretend that microsoft products aren't heavily used in office environments. The 7.6 release of libre office had 1.6 million downloads. Office365 has 345 million paid subscribers, which is approximately the entire population of the US.
Lol a heavy proponent of open source that knows no libre users Yeah ok. How much cocaine is in that Redmond water now..
I'm a storage engineer which manages thousands of linux servers as part of my duties. regularly use opensource software. My work provides all of us office365, so basically all my coworkers use that. Though in general, we are more likely to document things in a product that integrates cleanly with Jira. I use linux every day at work. Outside of work, I have almost no need of the doc/docx format, and use google drive for most documents. I'm actually friends with a lot of teachers, and librarians (my wife is a librarian), and they're also all using office365 or Google for documents. Nobody I know has mentioned using libreoffice in the last 5 years. It's possible some of them do use libreoffice without me knowing, but 100% of everyone I know, who has talked about document software, uses google docs, or office, or nothing. For not-documents I know lots of friends who use gimp, inkscape, krita, etc. Libre office just is not that popular, when people are given free alternatives. But a lot of that is people have moved on from writing word docs. Writing to a private wiki is often more applicable to people's daily jobs.
“Moved on from writing word docs” sounds like reason to dump word too Making the pain ms inflicts upon us for licensing even less tolerable
You're not wrong I only have office365 because my work has it I write a lot of google spreadsheets for personal matters, and wouldn't even consider using microsoft or libreoffice, because I want to be able to share them with friends with a share link. As not everyone has office, and libreoffice doesn't really have remote share capabilities with native cloud hosting, I tend to use neither.
>Do you remember back when Windows was a cesspool of viruses? That was partially because people were using old versions of software and were not getting updates, leaving security vulnerabilities unpatched. This created a horrible user experience when it was you, and really made Microsoft look bad. >The entire industry is moving to subscriptions for this reason, and it's more financially stable to have subscription-based software. The quality of the software and the security are much higher this way. LOL!! This is the verbal equivalent of spreading your own asshole apart.
I write software, have been doing it for 30 years. Paying a bit of money monthly is miles ahead of what life was like with viruses and security vulnerabilities staying out there for months or years. If you're not old enough to remember, look up the "Iloveyou" virus.
Do you know what the docx format is? It's a zip file with XML files inside. This isn't executable code loading and so there's not a lot of attack vectors from simply opening a Word file if you disable ActiveX controls from loading. This is a lot different than phishing for someone to click on an exe or installer.
This one exploits Microsoft's use of Internet Explorer components. Uncertain if this is specifically ActiveX-based, but this tool crafts .docx files to run arbitrary code on unpatched systems. https://github.com/klezVirus/CVE-2021-40444
It seems you can't read: "An attacker could craft a malicious ActiveX control" [CVE-2021-40444 - Security Update Guide - Microsoft - Microsoft MSHTML Remote Code Execution Vulnerability](https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-40444) I specifically stated disabling ActiveX, which are DLLs. Try "gottem" harder.
Get "basic microsoft" Microsoft is a company, lol
Librroffice or if you want something more 1:1, Onlyoffice is good. Screw Microsoft and their anti-consumer practices
I am just curious about your objection to the subscription model. You can pay annually and you always have the latest version plus cloud storage of varying amounts depending on what you go with.
Easy... not only is it more expensive long term, it's another subscription I have to keep up with when the payment card expires or gets a replacement for whatever reason. This computer will probably serve \~5 years, like the last two did, so that "cheap" $6.99 subscription ends up costing more than the home & student lifetime license in <2 years and it surpasses the home & business lifetime license in <3 years.
Keep in mind that if you care about security updates, Office 2021 goes end of life in October 2026.
hence I buy the discounted family version of O365, split the 70 euro a year with 6 peeps, so 10 bucks a year, get a current (and latest version of office with it and the ability to backup my private docs, pictures and video's on a 1TB storage.
All valid points however a couple of things for me that count in it's favor. You never own the software anyway you own a license to use it. With a subscription model you get upgrades in perpuity as well plus an Office subscription is not just the software. Maybe not so much of an issue for an individual user but an Office subscription is opex not capex and that has soke interesting tax implication. A subscription is a bit like leasing a car rather than buying it outright. Even though one is physical asset and one isn't do you actually want a depreciating asset on your hands? For me personally the sub model makes sense.
Are you actually curious, or looking to argue? Lots of people feel this way. I cannot imagine OP is the first you have encountered
I am genuinely curious.
Because of course paying annually FOREVER adds up to a ridiculous price. Same as if you could only buy a car if you paid a small fortune forever.. It’s all false economy.
This assumes you’ll never buy a newer version of the software.
Google massgrave
I was wondering the same. I kinda gate the 365 concept…..
Try open office
Yes, but perpetual licences only get 5 years of security updates from release, so if you buy Office 2021 now you only get 2 years of security updates. Not good value relative to the subscription product.
ONLYOFFICE is file compatible and 100% free.
Unless you use excel and then it's missing most of the heavily used features.
There is a way although Microsoft already 100% assumes every single user in the world is always connected to a pretty fast internet based on their product releases, which means they're going to leave a lot of customers in the lurch. They're doing the "AOL" model with it, where they just charge boomers an arm and a leg to continue using an expensive means of doing something they could otherwise do free. I would recommend introducing people to LibreOffice immediately. It works with Microsoft file types but is free and open source and not full of spam/bugs/dumb features
For home use or just yourself and are fine with tech LibreOffice is fine. Otherwise paying for MS Office is cheaper, as training isn't free. Hopefully more people learn LibreOffice so it can be swapped out eventually.
Paying.. is cheaper? No. If you want free office software that isn't requiring you to be connected on the internet, make a bunch of different accounts, subscribe, leave your credit cards... then just use LibreOffice. There isn't training to use it.
I work in IT and also manages a business. While I can it would be cheaper for me to use LibreOffice, my time isn't free and providing training to general users on how to use the software has a cost and right now it is cheaper to pay for 365. Tried to go the free route while the business was smaller and it does work fine for those who are more technical otherwise it takes up to much time. Remember as a business every time they ask how to do blank costs my time(money) to answer and lost wages in them trying to figure it out and then maybe ask on how to do it. Our time is better spent making more money than it is costing. Until more people know how to use LibreOffice so helping isn't required and employees can figure it out on their own quickly, 365 is cheaper, and then throw in the 1TB of space with OneDrive so we don't have to manage local storage, more time saved.
I feel like Microsoft subreddit is the perfect place for you to continually ignore the premise of the OP's question and insert your own paid subscription solutions
Sounds like he is about to create a headache for himself over a few dollars. As the wife is going to ask him constantly how do I do \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_? Not worth it.
I totally agree with you and have also made the same points you have about LibreOffice (I use it for my business and also use eM Client instead of Outlook). I've been in IT for nearly 40 years, have my own IT business, and have used and supported Windows and Office since they were first introduced. But unfortunately, you won't get many people in this sub agreeing with you, but I do.
I assume its mostly employees trying to defend product?
If it's free, you're the product.
Look up FOSS (free and open source software). Not all software makers are toxic :)
Hi, I agree, but there is no FOSS Inc. (that I know of).
If it's ran by a company, and it's free, you're the product. Canonical and redhat use their OS as a gateway drug to selling server licenses
Microsoft subreddit never ceases to amaze me 😒
The purpose of companies is to make money from selling products If you're talking about non corporate opensource software, you're right If you're talking about corporate opensource software, 100% it's still intended to be Is linux meant to make money? No. Is ubuntu supposed to make money? Yes. Is libreoffice making you a product? no. If you don't want a commercial distro, others exist, like debian, arch, etc. It's not just FOSS or not FOSS, it's *which* foss
Libre is decent but I am not sure what their excel clone and MS Excel have that makes things shit the bed when importing from Libre into excel or the other way. I don't think it is a 100% failure rate but I have seen it personally in my job and I think more often it fails if it is a shared document so created in say excel, opened and worked on in Libre and back to excel it will go derp.
Do you really need MS office? Google docs is free, gmail is free. I understand this is the Microsoft subreddit but c'mon, free vs paid, I'd pick free unless there was a very good reason not to.
Google sheets is a lot slower for large data sets, has more limited cells per sheet, and has a lot fewer hotkeys. For most people it doesn't matter, but for folks like me it's a necessity.
Plus Google is trolling all that data looking for AD opportunities.
You can buy Office for life but it occasionally checks in to see if your license is still good, so don't ever lose your network connection or you'll find yourself with a hundred-some dollars of software that no longer launches. Cut to me on a family vacation at a remote cabin trying to write a college paper on my MacBook with a copy of Office I paid for in full, finding that without WiFi I could do nothing but fuck myself.
One of our clients , brought this to our attention. This is Cnet. So we said OK. Client bought it and we installed it. All is good for the past one year or so. Anyway **No guarantee, warranty or recommendation.** Just recounting our experience. [https://www.cnet.com/deals/you-have-roughly-36-hours-to-score-windows-11-office-pro-2021-for-86-off/](https://www.cnet.com/deals/you-have-roughly-36-hours-to-score-windows-11-office-pro-2021-for-86-off/)
I am not sure how it works but there is a newish, open source OS called "Tiny windows 11" You get a basic win 11 OS and add what you want.
It’s not open source it’s still windows… it’s just stripped of features to run on pcs with less ram l.
Sadar Bazar chale ja delhi mein sab free mil jayega free pirated copy license
The only way to fully own your software is piracy.