Microsoft Launches 'Office 365 Personal' Plan for One Mac and One iPad at $69/Year

[satcomer]

I got away from Microsoft software instead using the free LibreOffice along with the included iWork application s and have been truly going along great.

For most home pictures I shelled on the shareware Pixelmator. IMHO it is better than Adobe Elements along with being a lot cheaper.

 

[Tech198]

i don't use Office, but if i did, i would have this...

Perfect for home uses....... Cheap as hell.

 

[spinedoc77]

The gripers need to save the $29 for their Invisible Shield screen protector (AKA $30 plastic film). Also $50 for a smart cover (AKA piece of polystyrene with a magnet). Then $60 for a set of Apple's proprietary to non-proprietary connectors that cost them around $3 to manufacture. Plus $40/year for iCloud storage that you can't even stick files on and $25/year to stick your songs in the cloud (subscriptions suck but these are okay since they're Apple's). And you have to buy a new set of these every year because the newest $800 iPad will come out and it'll be 2 mm thinner than the last one and you don't wanna be the guy that owns the thicker iPad

But software > $5, too expensive

Lol, I needed a good laugh this morning. So true!! Don't forget paying $100 to add 16gb storage onto your iPhone/ipad ~~!!!

 

[Mac32]

Seriously, when using Microsoft Office 2011 + Dropbox, what am I missing? Not much...
The difference in features up to Office 365 seems minimal, except for the ugly new visual overhaul.

 

[dmax35]

When reading all these comments, I can't help but thing...
What happened to the "if it's free, you're the product" you all love when we talk about google?

So you don't want to "be the product", yet you don't want to pay either. Companies are here to make money, not to provide you software for free you know.

What would the slop trolls living in their moms basement have to complain about than if it's not free. Doh!...Sorry they would still complain!

 

[maflynn]

Seriously, when using Microsoft Office 2011 + Dropbox, what am I missing? Not much...
The difference in features up to Office 365 seems minimal, except for the ugly new visual overhaul.

You're not missing much, but if you want to use Office on the iPad that changes things and if you want to upgrade 2011 to the 2014 edition when it comes out. Then that will be another factor but if your current setup is working now, there's no reason to change it.

 

[Mac32]

You're not missing much, but if you want to use Office on the iPad that changes things and if you want to upgrade 2011 to the 2014 edition when it comes out. Then that will be another factor but if your current setup is working now, there's no reason to change it.

Yes, I just read that Office 2014 might get released very soon. I think I'll wait for that. I have to say considering the amount of revenue Microsoft produces these days, the subscription fee for Office 365 seems unecessarily high. How many billion dollars does Microsoft need to stash away in various tax havens anyway?

 

[maflynn]

I have to say considering the amount of revenue Microsoft produces these days, the subscription fee for Office 365 seems unecessarily high.

The same can be said for Apple charging so much for their products.

Subscription based software is where the industry is moving, I'm not all that happy with the move, I in fact switched from PS to Pixelmator because I didn't want to pay adobe the money. My needs for image editing are very humble.

On the Office side of things, I'd say the 99 dollars is a good value. I can load Office on 5 computers and 5 tablets, and 4 other members of my family gets 25GB of OneDrive storage.

I have kids and my wife needs office, so their computers will have office. Its a good value for my money but YMMV

 

[CoMoMacUser]

2) Exchange. Really. Exchange is the gold standard. I hacked around with iCloud, and Google and had nothing but problems getting all my devices in sync. Some things synced just fine, others would be missing data, and the interfaces were always different and half-baked. In the 3 years I've been on Office365, I've had zero problems with Exchange. Everything syncs on all my devices, and I even have it in the cloud. So, yeah, Exchange has easily been worth the price of the entire subscription.

Thanks for confirming that it includes Exchange. I know what you mean about hacking around with other stuff. I currently have IMAP service, and when my contract expires next year, I'll definitely consider 365 just for that.

 

[Boghog]

A few things I'm not getting:

Firstly, how is this a model geared at businesses if it forces you to put your files on a MS server (at least for the iPad version)? As a businessman I would never allow my company's files to be stored off-site.

Secondly I keep hearing that MS Office has so many more features than its competitors and so is justified in being more costly. I can see that for Excel on the desktop (VBA, conditional formatting, locking/unlocking specific cells, SQL refresh). But since the iPad version doesn't have them, where is the added value?

Thirdly, I'm sure MS will keep innovating Office if only to keep their edge over their free competitors (if it exists) and can deploy feature enhancements rather than major versions. Sadly this negates one of the big other points in favour of MS Office: its tried and tested stability.

Lastly: What will I do with all my Office files once MS is no more? In my standalone version I will be able to keep using them, but O365 might stop working pretty abruptly. That can never happen, you say. I'd say, bigger giants have fallen and those were times that were not nearly so economically unstable as the current US and world economy. Most of us will once live in a post-Microsoft, post-Google and, yes, post-Apple world.

 

[sracer]

A few things I'm not getting:

...
Lastly: What will I do with all my Office files once MS is no more? In my standalone version I will be able to keep using them, but O365 might stop working pretty abruptly. That can never happen, you say. I'd say, bigger giants have fallen and those were times that were not nearly so economically unstable as the current US and world economy. Most of us will once live in a post-Microsoft, post-Google and, yes, post-Apple world.

The same thing you would do once Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. are no more. If, in your apocalyptic scenario O365 stops working, then buy a shrinkwrapped copy of Office AT THAT TIME and have full access to your files.

At some point you have to trust something. I'd say that "trusting" Microsoft with Office is safer than trusting Google with Google Docs. Google has a much worse reputation for dropping services than Microsoft.

 

[Minxy]

In an age of piracy I get that publishers want a yearly revenue but I feel this is a business model that is not sustainable as it just adds significantly more costs for honest consumers.

I'd say given the long history of such (IBM had been doing that since the creation of mainframes) that it is sustainable.

Sure for business. But as a regular consumer subscriptions to multiple companies add up to a lot of dough. But if Office 2014 does offer a one off purchase I will definitely go for that.

 

[Michael Goff]

Except the next version is worthless once you have the first one. There are simply no new features to add to Office, and Microsoft apparently isn't going to fix the performance problems and bugs.

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Actually, Google Docs does work offline (rarely needed), and iWork is cross-platform enough for a single user. If you need to send someone without a Mac your document, use a PDF. It's a good idea to do that even if it's Word-to-Word anyway. Even TextEdit would be good enough if it didn't feel so "sketchy" to use it.

And if I don't use Chrome, which I don't as it drains my battery so fast when I'm away from an outlet, I can't use GDocs offline.

You don't have a very good concept of value.

What incentive does the company have to improve their product in a subscription model? People will keep needing to use the office suite and they will pay to do so. MS keeps the revenue, even if they don't spend the resources on a 'new' version.

What's the incentive to keep improving their product? To keep people subscribed, of course. If they don't keep improving it, their competition will close the gap. Subscription gives them just as much incentive.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The same thing you would do once Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. are no more. If, in your apocalyptic scenario O365 stops working, then buy a shrinkwrapped copy of Office AT THAT TIME and have full access to your files.

At some point you have to trust something. I'd say that "trusting" Microsoft with Office is safer than trusting Google with Google Docs. Google has a much worse reputation for dropping services than Microsoft.

I don't trust anything or anyone, from hard experience. As you said, companies don't have to be "no more," the companies can "no more" the products. I have 25+ years of files, many in formats that can't be opened with anything that runs on today's hardware and OS. Planned (and unplanned) obsolescence is an ongoing problem, whether you buy into the subscription or the freestanding software model. Your files are hostages to the vagaries of the market. That said, I tend to think the subscription model is the inferior one if maintaining the viability of old files is a goal. I keep my old G4 Cube for just this reason; it runs apps going back to circa 1990. Every so often it needs to be fired up to rescue some otherwise unreadable old file. This scheme would not work if the apps on the G4 were subscription-based.

 

[sracer]

I don't trust anything or anyone, from hard experience. As you said, companies don't have to be "no more," the companies can "no more" the products. I have 25+ years of files, many in formats that can't be opened with anything that runs on today's hardware and OS. Planned (and unplanned) obsolescence is an ongoing problem, whether you buy into the subscription or the freestanding software model. Your files are hostages to the vagaries of the market. That said, I tend to think the subscription model is the inferior one if maintaining the viability of old files is a goal. I keep my old G4 Cube for just this reason; it runs apps going back to circa 1990. Every so often it needs to be fired up to rescue some otherwise unreadable old file. This scheme would not work if the apps on the G4 were subscription-based.

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

 

[Mal67]

All works well.

 

[Liquorpuki]

A few things I'm not getting:

Firstly, how is this a model geared at businesses if it forces you to put your files on a MS server (at least for the iPad version)? As a businessman I would never allow my company's files to be stored off-site.

You can store locally, you're not forced to to put it in the cloud. The cloud is just treated as another drive

 

[CoMoMacUser]

You can store locally, you're not forced to to put it in the cloud. The cloud is just treated as another drive

Thanks for confirming. That was another thing I was wondering about.

 

[itbeme]

O365 not perfect and I have not hopped on the train yet. That said, the iPad PowerPoint app is the ONLY iPad presentation display app that will properly open a PowerPoint presentation without mangling the hell out of it on the process. I used it in read only, fine.

As to subscription model - get used to it. XaaS is where all of this is going. I may be resistant to it, but I have fully accepted this is the future model. Truth be told, buying shrink-wrap was never much of an insurance policy against future incompatibility anyway. Ever discover a dusty old collection of CD's or DVD's that are 5 years and several revs back that no longer work with anything. They take up space, little else.

Rgds,

 

[thasan]

Name one app that is a serious competitor to Office.

depends on what u do. if for word processing, there are good options.
if its simple excel, iWork suit is fine.
powerpoint, everything is better in keynote.
and thats what i use.

----------

I don't think they really think about it as competing with other apps. Their main bread&butter customers are businesses, and office365 subscriptions make sense for businesses generally. And there is no real competitive app for business customers. (sure there will be exceptions, but you can always find exceptions to a general rule)

I don't think they're really serious about home users for Office anymore - at least not garden variety home users who don't already have to use Office due to their jobs. The free or very cheap apps already available have that market - why compete with them?

They probably figure those home users wouldn't pay unless it's in the single dollar digits, and why would they want to impact the price they can sell it to businesses for?? Why drop your price to $9 when you can sell it for $69?/yr? Do you really think they'd get more than 8 times the number of paying customers? I don't. Maybe they'd get 2 or 3 times the number of customers, but not enough to make up the difference.

Sadly this is how the Innovator's Dilemma happens... when you give up your lower-profit customers to disruptive competitors, but don't see them as real competitors until they keep adding enough features to be on par, and then it's too late.

The only unique advantage Office has is full file format compatibility - it's a huge advantage, but someone will eventually be able to do it. (but no, Pages and Google docs and so on really aren't there yet)

i agree... but if people (users) leave, companies will leave in a few years too...thats how i see it.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Thanks for confirming. That was another thing I was wondering about.

Just to prevent confusion, here's a link showing the nuances

Basically, you create something on the iPad or pull it from somewhere other than OneDrive, you can store it locally. You pretty much need to store it locally to save changes anyway.

If you downloaded the doc from OneDrive, it also gets stored locally, but the changes automatically sync with the copy stored in the cloud.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

For work, if you do pivot tables...in Excel will Google or Apple work for you? No way, but you represent only 1% of the user base.

Just because iWork is severely deficient in terms of features doesn't mean Google are:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/pivot-tables-now-in-google-spreadsheets.html

 

[phoenixsan]

This is.....

a good alternative to get full functionality on Office versions for iOS devices. Microsoft had found a compromise solution to mantain the cash flow, after surrender part of earnings to the normal cut that Apple gets....

 

[CoMoMacUser]

I chatted with two reps to verify that 365 Personal includes hosted Exchange. The first said yes. The second checked with a supervisor, who said that's available only with the business editions.

 

[voipman]

The gripers need to save the $29 for their Invisible Shield screen protector (AKA $30 plastic film). Also $50 for a smart cover (AKA piece of polystyrene with a magnet). Then $60 for a set of Apple's proprietary to non-proprietary connectors that cost them around $3 to manufacture. ... But software > $5, too expensive

Please don't exaggerate or make false claims... there's no way it costs Apple that much to manufacture the connectors.

[The fancy packaging, on the other hand, probably costs them as much as manufacturing the connector itself. ]