Office 2016 - Microsoft

[PistolBob]

Looking to move to the latest Office...2016...its like $350 a copy or I can get on Office 365 for $70 a year...they come out with a new Office every 3 years...for $99 a year I can get Office 365 and a 5 PC license to put the software on up 5 PC's I own...both accounts offer a 1 TB OneDrive in the cloud of Microsoft and a hour of Skype every month....

Why wouldn't I want to go with Office 365.

 

[steveh_131]

Makes sense if you plan to upgrade every time a new one comes out.

But why would you want to do that?

 

[PistolBob]

I think it makes sense because there are three of us in the house that will be using it...so I don't have to buy three copies. The $99 deal also includes a 1TB Onedrive per user, which is attractive for file sharing and backups....I don't see much of a downside...it's cheaper than Netflix.

 

[Tactically Fat]

Do you NEED it.... Or will Open Office's programs suit you?

 

[steveh_131]

The downside to me is owning the software vs. renting the software. Adding a regular fee to my annual overhead holds no appeal to me.

You can get Office 2016 'Home' version for $125 on amazon. Do you need outlook, publisher or access? If not, Home is the way to go.

Three copies of that will run you $375. So in 3.75 years, instead of still paying $100/month you're paying $0/month.

BUT, you're stuck with 2016. So if you need to have the most recent version of office at all times, maybe 365 is the way to go.

Or, like the other guy said, start using an open source office suite for $0.

 

[steveh_131]

And by the way, $350 for an office suite is absolutely ridiculous - as is their new rental pricing scheme that I suspect will become the standard and only way to purchase office in the future.

Screw microsoft.

 

[danimal]

In addition to 5 PC licenses (mix and match MAC and WIN), you get 5 smartphone licenses, and 5 tablet licences... so you actually get 15 seats with 1x 365 subscription. The way 365 installs, it installs as "virtual installations", so you can actually install and run multiple versions side by side on the same PC w/o overlapping issues (well, much less problems than you used to have). You also have access to 365 on the web, where if you are not at a PC that has office installed, you can log in to the office portal site and use the web based versions of word, excel, and powerpoint from anywhere. So any documents you keep in OneDrive you can open from anywhere. Pretty similar to what Apple does with iClound and their work suite, or Google with Drive and Docs.

When you consider that Google Drive is $10/mo for 1TB, and office 365 gives you 1TB for $10/mo or $99/yr, save $20), MS basically gives you office for free.

It appears that MS is on a 3yr schedule with office products [2007-2010-2013-2016]. So depending on your own upgrade schedule, buying outright can be less, or it can be more, but some of the extra perks are actually quite nice and make the 365 subscription worth more than just the base software.

But Steve is right, Office is moving to a software as a service model, so it probably won't be too many more versions until it is only available through a 365 subscription.

 

[JTScribe]

I paid ten bucks for mine. My company is a Microsoft partner, and we can buy home copies of our work software at a lowered price. Might be something to look into if you work for a big company.

 

[PistolBob]

Do you NEED it.... Or will Open Office's programs suit you?

Have tried Open Office, Star Office, Libre Office and 10 flavors of Linux desktops....I need speed and reliable ability to share docs of all kinds with my customers....so I NEED Office.

 

[atvdave]

I paid ten bucks for mine. My company is a Microsoft partner, and we can buy home copies of our work software at a lowered price. Might be something to look into if you work for a big company.

Same here, $9.95. I'm thinking about getting MS Office Professional Plus 2016 from the 2013 which I have now, but in 2016 do they make you use the cloud?

 

[PistolBob]

The downside to me is owning the software vs. renting the software. Adding a regular fee to my annual overhead holds no appeal to me.

You can get Office 2016 'Home' version for $125 on amazon. Do you need outlook, publisher or access? If not, Home is the way to go.

Three copies of that will run you $375. So in 3.75 years, instead of still paying $100/month you're paying $0/month.

BUT, you're stuck with 2016. So if you need to have the most recent version of office at all times, maybe 365 is the way to go.

Or, like the other guy said, start using an open source office suite for $0.

Office 365 is $99 a year if I want it for 5 installs. Less than Netflix. I need Outlook and not publisher or Access though....I wonder if they will unbundle those and give me a better price...never thought to ask them. Tried open source office suites and they are great for most home users but I need 100% simple MS compatibility for my customers. Good ideas though.

 

[PistolBob]

Same here, $9.95. I'm thinking about getting MS Office Professional Plus 2016 from the 2013 which I have now, but in 2016 do they make you use the cloud?

No. With Office 365 you get the apps on your computer PLUS access to the cloud apps...plus 1TB of cloud drive. $99 a yr

 

[JTScribe]

Same here, $9.95. I'm thinking about getting MS Office Professional Plus 2016 from the 2013 which I have now, but in 2016 do they make you use the cloud?

No, I save everything locally, but I do a scheduled document backup to my OneDrive account every 24 hours. So you CAN use it but it's not a requirement AFAIK.

 

[PistolBob]

And by the way, $350 for an office suite is absolutely ridiculous - as is their new rental pricing scheme that I suspect will become the standard and only way to purchase office in the future.

Screw microsoft.

Office 2016 Pro is $359 on Amazon (Word, Excel, Outlook, One Note, Publisher, Access, Powerpoint...no One Drive, no Skype, for 1 PC)
Office Home and Business is $183 on Amazon (no Publisher and no Access for 1 PC)
Office Home and Student is $108 on Amazon (No Outlook, Access or Publisher, no OneDrive for 1 PC)

Office 365 Home is $80.85/yr on Amazon (Excel, Outlook, Word, Publisher, One Note, Access, Powerpoint, for 5 PCs, 1TB One Drive, web access to apps)

I think I just bought Office 365 for Home....from Amazon. Cheaper than Prime or Netflix...

 

[KittySlayer]

...there are three of us in the house that will be using it...

Is someone a student? The student version is way cheaper. Read the license, it is reasonably loosey goosey on getting the software when a student is in the house, if you care about that kind of stuff.

 

[atvdave]

No, I save everything locally, but I do a scheduled document backup to my OneDrive account every 24 hours. So you CAN use it but it's not a requirement AFAIK.

Thanks.. I'm downloading it now. I'll be working out of town for 3 weeks starting next week, so this will give me something to do as I'm bored to death setting in a hotel room.

 

[PistolBob]

Is someone a student? The student version is way cheaper. Read the license, it is reasonably loosey goosey on getting the software when a student is in the house, if you care about that kind of stuff.

Nope...no students...I wish. You can get about any legitimate MS DVD from IUPUI for like $10 a disk....or you could a couple years ago....sweet deal.

 

[steveh_131]

Glad it works out well for you.

I just can't stand this new 'rental' model for software. It's like they artificially inflated the prices of their products to make this seem more attractive.

Very little is going to actually change in an office suite for the next 20 years. What more can they do in a word processor that it doesn't already do? Aesthetic changes, that's about it. The reality is that we're reaching a point where nobody wants to pay $350 for Word with a different color scheme. I've been using Office 2007 at work since, well, 2007 and it works just fine for me. I've used 2013 as well, does the exact same stuff. Looks a little cooler I guess. Not $350 (PER COMPUTER) cooler.

Now that nobody wants to pay for upgrades any more, they've come up with a new scheme that lets them collect money from you every year until the end of time - and at the end of it, you own nothing.

At least Netflix gives you new content every once in a while.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

We're upgrading to this at my office right now, and along with it... each user is entitled to 5 licenses to use as they wish on home machines.

Do you work somewhere with Office 365?

 

[PistolBob]

We're upgrading to this at my office right now, and along with it... each user is entitled to 5 licenses to use as they wish on home machines.

Do you work somewhere with Office 365?

Nope...not any more.