Office is a premium app suite. Most 'home' users can get by without the premium features. Lots of very simple cheap/free word processors out there. A business should be giving their employees the tools to do their job.
I personally think $99 a year with installs on 5 different computers is pretty reasonable.
We use a business 365 plan for our email hosting and I don't find the cost unreasonable. For the software we have downloaded I'd be looking at close to a grand and would have have to pay that all over again when a new version is released if I wanted to update.
I agree. $99 a year isn't bad for 5 installs, cloud storage, the FULL office suite (Access), and tablet/mobile use.
Also, even if you only use Office one in a while, if it does something that not other software can come close to (Excel), or if it ensure that when you do work with other people you have compatibility, then it is worth the fee.
I like Pages '09 for small personal stuff, but Word is excellent for formal writing and nothing beats excel. I tried to use Numbers, but it was too frustrating and why waste time that I could use to become better at excel.
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If Pages did something amazing that Word didn't do I would be willing to add extra steps. But importing and exporting can introduce anomalies and I don't want to have to check to make sure that my formatting wasn't changed, etc.
Yes. You are correct. Also, I cannot risk even the slightest issue with a Pages export. I work in an academic and professional setting, I can't risk Pages to export even a heading incorrectly when I submit something.
If it is critically important, I will check in Office on Windows through VMWare, though I haven't had any issue between Mac and Windows Word.
I did have a few issues between Mac and Windows excel though...