Office 2022 to have a one time purchase

[Metallic-Lighght]

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

Office 365 has been officially renamed Microsoft 365. It's been rumored that just like KMS activation, soon you'll be able to subscribe to a Windows 10 license. But for now, that done through VLSC. So you laugh now, but that will be reality sooner or later.

If this actually happens, I will officially switch to Linux Mint. 

[Tech Enthusiast]

3 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

I just want a stable version that keeps working without messing up my documents. No weekly updates, no gimmicky features, etc.

 

Completely gave up on Word in favor of Latex. Easier to manage and restore work, subversions with with git, etc. Overleaf > Office 365.

 

Bloody hell,... you really think THAT beast is easier to manage? I had to use that for my masters degree and hated every second of it. Word just works and does exactly what you want it to. Latex on the other hand.... 

[LAwLz]

2 minutes ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

Bloody hell,... you really think THAT beast is easier to manage? I had to use that for my masters degree and hated every second of it. Word just works and does exactly what you want it to. Latex on the other hand.... 

LaTeX looks way better though. Especially if you write documents with lots of graphs and other figures.

[pythonmegapixel]

Just now, Tech Enthusiast said:

Bloody hell,... you really think THAT beast is easier to manage? I had to use that for my masters degree and hated every second of it. Word just works and does exactly what you want it to. Latex on the other hand.... 

Latex is kinda the Linux of word processing software. There's loads of distributions of it most of which are FOSS, it's a pain to install, even more of a pain to learn, but once you get used to it, it's predictable and it "just works". It gives you more control at the expense of a greater learning curve and some teething problems.

 

Also Latex produces much nicer results than Word, if you know how to use it. Especially when it comes to things like mathematical notation.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

A retail Windows 10 (home) copy costs 130 dollars, not 300.

It's 200 dollars if you buy the retail Windows 10 Pro directly from Microsoft. OEM version are even cheaper as you said. You don't even have to buy it from a sketchy gray market. You can buy a brand new OEM copy of Windows 10 Pro from Walmart for 60 dollars.

 

So the whole "it would take 5 years to get to that in monthly payments" is more like 12 to 22 months.

 

Besides, Windows 10 was released in 2015. So if we are going to compare monthly payments vs one-time payments then the breakdown would have looked like this:

One-time payment: 60 dollars and it is free forever.

Subscription: I would have paid 360 dollars so far and an additional 72 dollars every year I want to keep using Windows 10.

 

Not a good deal. Companies aren't pushing for consumer subscription services because they are kind and it is good. They do it because the companies behind it wants to make more money and earn it in a predicable stream rather than in big chunks. Simple as that.

The ones for 130 are single machine only licenses and when installed, it's on it forever. So, no. Unless US has different pricing somehow. Windows that you can have on one machine at a time, but you can reinstall it countless times on different systems, those are nowhere near 130 bucks in Europe.

[kuddlesworth9419]

5 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

So it's no different than installing the volume license version of Office. I guess that makes sense. 

 

Or just like Windows, not activated.

Windows is pretty easy to activate without paying for anything. Hell you can get most software without paying a penny.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, comander said:

There are cases where deleting things actually deletes things. 
Clear your google history and watch as your ads become WAY less specific and your news feed is a lot less targeted. 
They definitely make A LOT of things a lot harder to delete than others though. 

I wouldn't know, I haven't been using anything Google for basically 2 years now... But lets just say I don't believe Google when they say they delete things. What you delete is the stuff you see and impacts you directly. It doesn't delete the algorithms and aggregated data from your own data. That's theirs forever.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

The ones for 130 are single machine only licenses and when installed, it's on it forever. So, no. Unless US has different pricing somehow. Windows that you can have on one machine at a time, but you can reinstall it countless times on different systems, those are nowhere near 130 bucks in Europe.

The OEM copy is one machine only. The retail copy can be tied to your Microsoft account and reinstalled if you so desire.

[Arika]

=Adobe left the chat=

[StDragon]

7 hours ago, Mihle said:

I use Libreoffice only because I do not use those programs that much really.

Related note, I don't know about alternatives to Libreoffice, just use it because it's first thing that comes up basically when you Google.

I know Microsoft Office is better (at least I think so) but I don't think it's worth it when I use it the amount I do. If I would starting using it more, I would get one time licence and not a subscription as I dislike subscriptions.

I live and breath in MS Outlook for work. Exchange is the gold standard for email, contacts, and calendar management. Being able to organize within folders and sub-folders is crucial. Searching within is also heavily utilized too. The problem with Gmail is that its paradigm is around tagging, and the viewing chain of correspondence is confusing as hell to me. Oh, and IMAP support is still limited (always has been); only a step up from POP3 in that you don't have to worry about whether or not content on the PC is still in the cloud and synced congruently between all devices.

 

If it wasn't for MS Outlook and Exchange, I would be using a free alternative to the MS Office suite.

[cj09beira]

i dont even get why people would upgrade excel/ word etc, hell i was using office 2004 (i much prefer the 2004's Ui vs the stupid newer uis) until at least 2016 and only stopped because i moved to linux, and thus libreoffice (only problem i have with it is that its quite a bit slower, but i only load small sheets so its been fine for my use). are there even any newer features anyone is using? i bet most people dont use any.

[pythonmegapixel]

34 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Exchange is the gold standard for email, contacts, and calendar management.

Except for the fact that it's crap.

It's not nessecarily a bad protocol - but it's borderline unusable because there are so hilariously few pieces of software that s

 

It's also solving a nonexistent problem. IMAP works perfectly well, and is an open standard that existed for a few years before the first release of Exchange.

 

Quote

Being able to organize within folders and sub-folders is crucial. Searching within is also heavily utilized too.

Again, IMAP does that...

 

Quote

The problem with Gmail is that its paradigm is around tagging, and the viewing chain of correspondence is confusing as hell to me.

Yes I agree with that... why can't they just use a standard system?

[pythonmegapixel]

4 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

i dont even get why people would upgrade excel/ word etc, hell i was using office 2004 (i much prefer the 2004's Ui vs the stupid newer uis) until at least 2016 and only stopped because i moved to linux, and thus libreoffice (only problem i have with it is that its quite a bit slower, but i only load small sheets so its been fine for my use). are there even any newer features anyone is using? i bet most people dont use any.

New "Morph" transisition in PowerPoint is pretty cool, and the switch to the Open XML formats (don't know why they didn't just use the preexisting open standard for this but nevermind) was worthwhile, but not really anything worth upgrading for tbh.

 

I only use the latest version because my school happens to have a license for it.

[cj09beira]

6 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

i dont even get why people would upgrade excel/ word etc, hell i was using office 2004 (i much prefer the 2004's Ui vs the stupid newer uis) until at least 2016 and only stopped because i moved to linux, and thus libreoffice (only problem i have with it is that its quite a bit slower, but i only load small sheets so its been fine for my use). are there even any newer features anyone is using? i bet most people dont use any.

so i went looking and this is how my win 8 looked in 2017  

Spoiler

 

[Doobeedoo]

Good move. Subscriptions suck. Maybe Adobe will return to same option too, also improve their suite in general. 

But yeah, really at this point I wondered how come they didn't bundle Office with Windows by now. Have them both offered and have some premium option as sub with extras for teams and other features for enterprise. 

[HempBoosh]

I'm glad Microsoft is doing this, they can afford it. But I get that this isn't a business model that everyone can manage. Some developers only have the one app and a subscription model is the only way they can maintain a business.

[RejZoR]

51 minutes ago, comander said:

Sufficiently aggregated data isn't much of a privacy concern. This includes models which in a loose sense condense and aggregate data into a hyperplane. 

 

The standard I use FYI is "is there plausible deniability?" 

Aggregated as in "not raw data". You only delete raw data when you "erase" things...

[RejZoR]

15 minutes ago, comander said:

Countries.     Population

China.             1.6 billion

India.               1.5 billion

...

 

 

Yeah, aggregated, with anything not meeting k-anonymity thresholds (so if an entry only had one person it wouldn't show)

 

 

https://policies.google.com/technologies/anonymization?hl=en-US

Aggregated as in PROCESSED data. You delete raw data. Whatever model they built from your raw data is theirs forever and you can delete all you want.

[StDragon]

7 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Except for the fact that it's crap.

It's not nessecarily a bad protocol - but it's borderline unusable because there are so hilariously few pieces of software that s

 

It's also solving a nonexistent problem. IMAP works perfectly well, and is an open standard that existed for a few years before the first release of Exchange.

 

Again, IMAP does that...

 

Yes I agree with that... why can't they just use a standard system?

Several points to be made here....

• Exchange is proprietary, but most importantly, reliable; but definitely not unusable. Besides, the fact e-mails are stored in a local database as either PST or OST provide enhanced performance. Some IMAP clients will store e-mails as individual files. Performance is just awful due to indexing issue.

 

• IMAP does not sync anything but e-mail. So things like tasks, notes, contacts, and calendars will never sync between client and server (cloud) with strictly that protocol standard. That is why Google, MailEnable, and Zimbra have plug-ins for Outlook to give it that "Exchange-Like" functionality with IMAP. If you need Exchange, you get Exchange!

 

• As for why they don't use a standard system? Same reasons Microsoft doesn't, vendor lock-in and maintaining market-share. They do it because well, they can. And that's that.

 

[pythonmegapixel]

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

Several points to be made here....

• Exchange is proprietary, but most importantly, reliable; but definitely not unusable. Besides, the fact e-mails are stored in a local database as either PST or OST provide enhanced performance

That would all be great, if I could find a decent lightweight piece of software that supports it!

 

Outlook is OK, but it's clunky, and you're not even allowed to install it these days without also getting the rest of MS Office...

 

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

 

• Some IMAP clients will store e-mails as individual files. Performance is just awful due to indexing issue

For some people that's a good thing. For example I have a friend who prefers to store a local backup of their emails... much easier with IMAP than Exchange! But then he doesn't often use search so

 

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

• IMAP does not sync anything but e-mail. So things like tasks, notes, contacts, and calendars will never sync between client and server (cloud) with strictly that protocol standard

Fair enough, if you need that functionality.

 

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

• As for why they don't use a standard system? Same reasons Microsoft doesn't, vendor lock-in and maintaining market-share. They do it because well, they can. And that's that.

 

I think the outcome of this discussion is as follows. (And, for the record, you've changed my mind about Exchange a little as I now see its merits over IMAP!)

 

For some people (those who need best search performance and need to sync calendar, contacts and notes), Exchange is better.

 

For others (those who want an open standard with wider compatibility and/or want to archive their mail locally), IMAP is better.

 

Basically, as with so many of these discussions: It depends on the use case

[Jito463]

And here I am still running Office 2003......

[TotallyNotGigabit]

On 9/25/2020 at 3:25 PM, Doobeedoo said:

Good move. Subscriptions suck. Maybe Adobe will return to same option too, also improve their suite in general. 

But yeah, really at this point I wondered how come they didn't bundle Office with Windows by now. Have them both offered and have some premium option as sub with extras for teams and other features for enterprise. 

I'd pretty much love that. I still have CS5.5 but with Kepler and onward there's no compatibility, not to mention my camera's RAW doesn't work with Photoshop CS5 either.

 

With this move though it'll be an incentive to have a new desktop/laptop for the family with Office for them, so that's something positive.

[GoodBytes]

On 9/25/2020 at 3:10 AM, LAwLz said:

A retail Windows 10 (home) copy costs 130 dollars, not 300.

It's 200 dollars if you buy the retail Windows 10 Pro directly from Microsoft. OEM version are even cheaper as you said. You don't even have to buy it from a sketchy gray market. You can buy a brand new OEM copy of Windows 10 Pro from Walmart for 60 dollars.

No. Walmart website is like Amazon. They are open to third party sellers. This is sold and shipped by: "Cloud Computing", 

That said, unlike Amazon, Walmart you are on you own if they don't deliver the correct purchased goods. There is little protection for consumers, which is Walmart biggest flaw, and Walmart, desperate for third party sellers, just accept anything and everything, like Windows 8 early Store days.

 

The seller is probably charging you 60$, only to go himself to some gray market 5$ Windows, and just put YOUR information in, making 55$ profit.

 

[Kisai]

On 9/24/2020 at 4:59 PM, AkatsukiKun said:

And even once you finish your studies, whether that be college, university or whatever and you still have it downloaded on your computer, you still have access to it, though it only pesters you to sign in with an active account or asks to renew the license. Other than that I still got full functionality even after 1.5 years after I graduated.

Yeah, but if you're actually using it, you're not using a licensed copy and thus it's the same as piracy.

 

On 9/24/2020 at 8:51 PM, williamcll said:

Let's be honest here most copies of office out there aren't even legally obtained.

No, most people who obtain office, obtain it from their business or government office by... taking things home they shouldn't. Like if hardware is being leased, and the company just crushes the computers, there's no net harm it taking the old equipment home that has all this stuff installed to it, however, ever since Windows 7 it's not been possible to "activate" enterprise versions of windows off-domain. You could instead have the machine do a re-install of the OS it was actually installed with (which is OEM key, not VLK)

 

Rather, you can just install Office 365 on your home PC, by logging into it with your business email and downloading the installer outside the office.

 

On 9/24/2020 at 10:20 PM, StDragon said:

The SaaS model is very popular with business from a consumption standpoint due to less budgetary constraints and it's predictable expenditure. Software vendors love SaaS too because it's a constant stream of income..

 

The consumer market however (not business related) prefers one time purchases.

In theory SaaS is the worst model because it requires you to pay for licenses based on how many computers you have, which is fine for software that you use 8 hours a day 260 days a year, but not for software that is special-purpose, which is still better with "per-seat" licensing, where you pay for X many licenses, and they float between users that need it, and you just buy additional licenses if your use case calls for it.

 

Adobe's SaaS model, is single-handedly the worst version. They've increased the price every year (probably due to people dumping Adobe products.) However unlike Office (where most use Exchange, Word and Excel,) most people only use one application (Photoshop, Premiere, Animate(Flash) or Acrobat) exclusively, so paying for the entire suite for everyone in the office is always a waste. Most Sole proprietorships (self-employed) people hate Adobe's licensing model because they would rather buy a perpetual license and use it until they buy new equipment (eg every 3-5 years) because they would have to do that anyway since transferring licenses from old hardware is a giant pain in the ass, and requires paying people to actually do it. So if you're paying someone $100/hr to uninstall and reinstall software, you may as well just buy it again.

 

[X-System]

5 hours ago, Jito463 said:

And here I am still running Office 2003......

Same for me