Looking for MS Office - how can some sellers sell so cheaply?

bl0at3r said:
I pay for Microsoft 365 Family edition which gives me all of the office suite and 1Tb of OneDrive cloud storage on upto 5 devices - so on my PC, iPad and iPhone for example.

I also share this with 3 other people in my family who all get their own instance of the above.

If you look on Amazon they often do offers like they are now…

M365 Family, for 15 months plus Norton (which you don’t need to use) - £54.99 which equates to £3.66 per month for M365.



M365 Personal, for 15 months plus McAfee (which you don’t need to use) - £45.99 which equates to £3.06 per month for M365.



You get the newest versions automatically and the cloud storage is useful too.

It‘s a no-brainer in my eyes (and you don’t have to try and work out how some knock off equivalent like Libre office functions).
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£54.99 for the first 15 months, then £183.99 per year after that, so not quite the whole story!!!


It‘s a no-brainer in my eyes (and you don’t have to try and work out how some knock off equivalent like Libre office functions)
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It's not a knock off any more than MS Word was of the many that came before it. Libre Office is easier for most people to use than word (office) and certainly doesn't take any more working out than Office/word.

For many years Word was probably the worst WP package, especially compared to a proper WP programme like Word Perfect, had so many undocumented "features" had to set the auto backup time very short :)

The took over the market with sly marketing, getting people hooked with cheap introductory offers, and giving government departments, education etc very low prices (which they still do)
 
Sangoma said:
£54.99 for the first 15 months, then £183.99 per year after that, so not quite the whole story!!!




It's not a knock off any more than MS Word was of the many that came before it. Libre Office is easier for most people to use than word (office) and certainly doesn't take any more working out than Office/word.

For many years Word was probably the worst WP package, especially compared to a proper WP programme like Word Perfect, had so many undocumented "features" had to set the auto backup time very short :)

The took over the market with sly marketing, getting people hooked with cheap introductory offers, and giving government departments, education etc very low prices (which they still do)
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What are you talking about?

Where has £183.99 come from? you are clearly misinformed because you just buy another one at £54.99 for another 12 or 15 months and stack them so they run one after the other - I have done this whenever they are on offer and my subscription currently expires in November 2027.

Get your facts right.
 
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bl0at3r said:
What are you talking about?

Where has £183.99 come from? you are clearly misinformed because you just buy another one at £54.99 for another 12 or 15 months and stack them so they run one after the other - I have done this whenever they are on offer and my subscription currently expires in November 2027.

Get your facts right.
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You may be correct but there’s no need for the aggression. ;)

I’m also in the MS office camp, largely as I’m a bit of an excel nerd and trying to use anything else is an exercise in frustration. Though I admit this is probably driven by almost 30 years of indoctrination.

But all the Office products are loads more complex than they need to be, and I can see that for casual users, the alternatives may be more than good enough.

Though the number of people I see who lack knowledge of even the basics at work is one of life’s great irritations. These include ‘clever’ people who sit with Excel open and have a calculator on their desk (people still have a calculator even in the era of smartphones). And in Word; people who toggle caps lock to capitalise, hold down return to get to a new page. I could go on.
 
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Sangoma said:
£54.99 for the first 15 months, then £183.99 per year after that, so not quite the whole story!!!

....
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The Family MS 365 subscription is £79.99 direct from MS, which can be had cheaper via Amazon deals as Alan said.
Like him, I use it for the family, (2 adults, 2 older teens in College) and as he said, it's good value for what you get.
 
bl0at3r said:
What are you talking about?

Where has £183.99 come from? you are clearly misinformed because you just buy another one at £54.99 for another 12 or 15 months and stack them so they run one after the other - I have done this whenever they are on offer and my subscription currently expires in November 2027.

Get your facts right.
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It states on the advert in the link that is the normal price.

I didn't see anywhere that said you would be able to renew at the reduced price, or that the special offer price was a permanently reduced price, nor did I see it stated that you could but two and use the one when the other expires.

Had that information been given, I would have been better informed :)
 
Microsoft offering deals to local government and local education authorities, has seen them get huge market share, as that also translated into business, with Office becoming the standard/default.

I think Google has been targeting education for many years, first to usurp the reliance on Windows devices(Apple have also been trying the same thing) with Chrome books, but also encouraging the use of Google Docs, which offers lot very similar to the Office programs for free. And offer automatic backup, and access from multiple devices for free too. There may be a couple of generations of young people who may have had little to no contact of Windows or Office. That will only the market share of Office decline.
 
Sangoma said:
It states on the advert in the link that is the normal price.

...
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Ah, you fell for Amazon's RRP trick.
They've bundled MS 365 and Norton, then listed the RRP for the full cost of MS 365 and Norton (which may well be £183.99), to make it seem like a much better deal than it really is (as you're only getting the bundle for the extra discount and 15 months rather than 12, and have no intention of installing or later renewing Norton.
 
Faldrax said:
Ah, you fell for Amazon's RRP trick.
They've bundled MS 365 and Norton, then listed the RRP for the full cost of MS 365 and Norton (which may well be £183.99), to make it seem like a much better deal than it really is (as you're only getting the bundle for the extra discount and 15 months rather than 12, and have no intention of installing or later renewing Norton.
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Yes, I wouldn't install Norton or McAfee, and I see what you say :)

At the same time, even if I wanted it, I wouldn't install Office unless I knew what the future costs would be, no doubt they are easily available, I haven't looked, I just looked at that link given.

I have no need for it, and so no intention to buy it, so won't be researching pricing, but one thing is for certain, it is much more expensive than free :)
 
Sangoma said:
...

I have no need for it, and so no intention to buy it, so won't be researching pricing, but one thing is for certain, it is much more expensive than free :)
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I looked at it from the viewpoint of how much time I would have to spend to answer questions from my wife and daughters on how something worked if I suggested using an alternative to MS office (which they were all familiar with) - the subscription cost to avoid that hassle seemed well worth it!
 
Sangoma said:
I have no need for it, and so no intention to buy it, so won't be researching pricing, but one thing is for certain, it is much more expensive than free :)
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It may be true that there "ain't no such thing as a free lunch" but Libreoffice comes awfully close...
 
As far as I am aware, because of Microsoft's dominance of office software, most other competing options, be that Google Docs, Libre Office or whatever, will, at the basic level, look and function like their Microsoft equivalents. And for most people, basic is all they need.
 
Phil V said:
You may be correct but there’s no need for the aggression. ;)

I’m also in the MS office camp, largely as I’m a bit of an excel nerd and trying to use anything else is an exercise in frustration. Though I admit this is probably driven by almost 30 years of indoctrination.

But all the Office products are loads more complex than they need to be, and I can see that for casual users, the alternatives may be more than good enough.

Though the number of people I see who lack knowledge of even the basics at work is one of life’s great irritations. These include ‘clever’ people who sit with Excel open and have a calculator on their desk (people still have a calculator even in the era of smartphones). And in Word; people who toggle caps lock to capitalise, hold down return to get to a new page. I could go on.
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TP where people can get angry about anything :)

With you on the Excel thing. alt-N-V is part of my muscle memory along with ctrl-shift-L. Though I think in a past life I must have offended the chart gods as they never choose the right one for me.

Also on the complexity - I just set up a new PC. Chocolatey did everything flawlessly - apart from Office. I had to sign in on another machine, share my account, sign in on the new machine, accept the share, download the install, run it, Google why it hadn't finished, reboot, try again, Google again, reboot, find it *had* finished but was still hanging, open Excel, choose to save my docs in a proper format, open Outlook, get told to try Outlook new................................
 
The biggest pain with MO and Teams etc is they keep wanting to make 'new' versions that just rearrange the deckchairs.
 
Another vote for MS 365 family subscription.
Like a lot of folk I used to scour the internet for cheap licences but for £80/year you and 5 family members have access to the up-to-date suite plus the added bonus of 1TB of cloud storage each!

Can’t be bad to that.

Jake
 
Tulipone said:
Thanks. I am sure that LibreOffice is now far better than when I last used it but would rather stick with something I know will not cause any compatibility issues.
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I have just (this last week) ditched Office 365 in favour of LibreOffice and have yet to see any problems. I develop and use some pretty quirky Excel spreadsheets and they have all opened, edited and saved perfectly in LO. If there is an issue in the future I'll just find the LO workaround :)

My main concern was what to replace Outlook with as there's nothing in LO. Mozilla's Thunderbird is an excellent alternative and I use iCloud Drive to replace One Drive for online storage and synchronisation between my two PCs, iPhone and iPad. Total cost is £0.99/month (for 50GB of iCloud Drive storage) compared to £7.99/month for Office 365.
 
Thunderbird is the obvious email client.
 
Tulipone said:
Seems that no one else here uses Numbers and Words that come bundled with Apple machines.
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I have tried it but cannot get on with it as I used excel and word for work.

I presume if you have it, and only use it you may get used to it.
 
Tulipone said:
Seems that no one else here uses Numbers and Words that come bundled with Apple machines.
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I do and Google Docs, both are fine for my basic needs.
 
sep9001 said:
I presume if you have it, and only use it you may get used to it.
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If they're the first applications of their kind you have come across, they are probably useful and maybe even excellent.

For me, with umpteen years of spreadsheet and word processor use, going back to Visicalc and Wordstar, their design is too alien.
 
Tulipone said:
Seems that no one else here uses Numbers and Words that come bundled with Apple machines.
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I've not tried them for a long time, but when I bought a Mac for business use I put some typical files - word and Excel - on a memory stick and tried them in the apple store. The writing application mangled formatting but was usable, whereas numbers failed to show graphs as well as failing to format properly. Perhaps they are better now, but given I can choose a universal application or one that may not work correctly, it's hard to justify using the limited version.

FWIW l also tried open office (not sure it had been forked then) and that was a lot better, though not 100% accurate.
 
Numbers works well with simple sheets, and has a dramatic difference in that you can have multiple tables on one tab. Removes the need for shenanigans with merging cells, rows, etc. to get other parts of a sheet to a format you want.
 
gman said:
I had already glanced their site, but nothing stood out. Does it say in that link?
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I don't know, that's why I posted the link for you.
 
gman said:
Does LibreOffice have an email client similar to Outlook?
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Not sure, but have a look at Thunderbird if you want an open source email client.
 
No, there's not an outlook equivalent.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Not sure, but have a look at Thunderbird if you want an open source email client.
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Thanks, we've used that in the past (for my wife) but I remember having some issues with it so moved to eM Client. I still prefer Outlook, but I use it for my accounts and prefer her stuff on a separate system. She uses contact lists a lot for marketing etc, so that's important.
 
redhed17 said:
Microsoft offering deals to local government and local education authorities, has seen them get huge market share, as that also translated into business, with Office becoming the standard/default.

I think Google has been targeting education for many years, first to usurp the reliance on Windows devices(Apple have also been trying the same thing) with Chrome books, but also encouraging the use of Google Docs, which offers lot very similar to the Office programs for free. And offer automatic backup, and access from multiple devices for free too. There may be a couple of generations of young people who may have had little to no contact of Windows or Office. That will only the market share of Office decline.
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That's where Microsoft counter with the 'Family' Office 365, which gives up to 5 people in the same household all of office, plus 1Tb Onedrive each (for auto save / backup / access from multiple devices), on multiple devices each (PC, Laptop, Phone, Tablet). It's bundled cheap enough that if just one person in the house 'needs' to use Office, then everyone might as well have Office.
 
One reason why I try to avoid commercial software, for my own needs, is that it too often turns into an endless pattern of versions going "end of life" and then you have to pay out to keep current with your new hardware.

I don't mind donating to an open source project that keeps their software current, without trying to force you into licensing hell.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
One reason why I try to avoid commercial software, for my own needs, is that it too often turns into an endless pattern of versions going "end of life" and then you have to pay out to keep current with your new hardware.

I don't mind donating to an open source project that keeps their software current, without trying to force you into licensing hell.
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You also get the reverse - an open source project that just falls into obscurity because it's never gets updated when there's an OS update, library change, etc.
I use a mix of sources, based on what seems best at the time.
 
I'm still using 2013 office i got from microsoft technet and it works perfect
it used to get updates but not sure anymore, but does it need any?

it wont registerl as standard anymore as its over 10 years old i just frigg the registry
 
Faldrax said:
You also get the reverse - an open source project that just falls into obscurity because it's never gets updated when there's an OS update, library change, etc.
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This is true.

Of course, you can always change to another project or even start an editor and fix the problem yourself! ;)
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
This is true.

Of course, you can always change to another project or even start an editor and fix the problem yourself! ;)
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I could, but as I work as a software engineer, I'm on the PC all day, add in a couple of my own little projects, and the idea of then picking up someone else's broken code and trying to sort it out has limited appeal :)
 
Faldrax said:
I could, but as I work as a software engineer, I'm on the PC all day, add in a couple of my own little projects, and the idea of then picking up someone else's broken code and trying to sort it out has limited appeal :)
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I did 35 years in IT.

Didn't stop me reading the source if I wanted something special. Then again, it often put me off the idea... ;)
 
Lots of orgs used to buy bulk licenses in batches of 50 or whatever, and if they only needed 45 they'd sell the other 5 to recoup costs.

I can't see that being a thing much longer, almost every business will have moved to 365 and pay per user.
 
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