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Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

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Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#281

Post by strangattractor »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #64

They also are actively decreasing the value by sunsetting Publisher in October 2026 [0]. Hilariously, the suggested replacement is PowerPoint, despite it being unable to natively open .pub files. The solution for that? Run a powershell script to convert all your publisher files to (uneditable) PDF. There are many memes about inserting photos into Word, and the content flying around and breaking. My pet theory is that…

Not to worry. Once they unleash those AI enhanced vibe programmers that are doing %33 more programming on this problem all will be good. The AI is already helping them to become more profitable by making it necessary to charge more for their product. The sky's the limit. Or Skynet's the limit;)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#282

Post by machomaster »

dabockster wrote: post #257
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to say something similar. Office 2000 seems more than sufficient for everybody outside of some very specific niches. The success of the comparatively much more basic Google Docs and Sheets are proof of this. Similarly I could live happily ever after with Photoshop 7.x or CS1 if they took full advantage of modern operating systems and hardware.

Office 2000/XP with the XML based file formats would be perfect.

And this is exactly why I use Libreoffice.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#283

Post by tombert »

dabockster wrote: post #259
quantumwannabe wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't really added anything to Office since 2013, the last pre-subscription version. There were massive changes between Office 98 and 2013, including entirely new programs like OneNote. They just found a way to get their customers to rebuy the same product every year. Same thing happened with Adobe and CS6; feature development slowed to a crawl after the change to a subscription.

> the last pre-subscription version Heads up that you can still buy perpetual licenses to Office either directly from Microsoft or through other sellers throughout the internet. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

They're routinely cheap on Groupon as well, often under $30.https://www.groupon.com/deals/world-office-standard-2024

Not that I want to encourage people to keep using Microsoft products.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#284

Post by the__alchemist »

wvenable wrote: post #243
amanzi wrote: post #240

Here in NZ, pretty much all medium/large businesses and govt departments have gone all-in with M365. Most govt departments are on the E5 licence, and have also started to roll out the Copilot licences too. The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues. It's all the data stored in SharePoin…

> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.

You're not kidding! I did a deep dive into this a few months ago, and the alternative situation was dismal! LibreOffice is the closest, but its performance has room for improvement.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#285

Post by tombert »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #237
Workaccount2 wrote: post #191

Most people using excel and word would be just as functional using office '98. SaaS is largely just a cancer on society. Monthly subscription to pay for features you never use and bug fixes you never should have needed.

They haven't really added anything to Office since 2013, the last pre-subscription version. There were massive changes between Office 98 and 2013, including entirely new programs like OneNote. They just found a way to get their customers to rebuy the same product every year. Same thing happened with Adobe and CS6; feature development slowed to a crawl after the change to a subscription.

About three years ago, I had a Macbook and I wanted to play with Flash/Animate again.

I went to Adobe's website, and couldn't find a non-subscription version to just buy, so I actually contacted customer support about it, and they said "nope, you have to pay for a subscription".

I could have of course sailed the high seas, but I opted to just buy a copy of Toonboom Harmony, which is fairly different than Flash but close enough and still offers perpetual licenses (and shockingly works pretty well with Wine/Proton on Linux).

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#286

Post by the__alchemist »

dabockster wrote: post #251
wvenable wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.

> Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft. I'd say it's more that this is the actual "developer shortage" that was being talked about a decade ago, but everyone mistakenly and stupidly interpreted it to be a shortage of tech workers for the larger firms. The number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, co…

> And that's all just to compete on Windows. Adding Mac and Linux into the mix makes it even harder.

Cross-platform compatibility is trivial with modern tooling IMO.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#287

Post by doubled112 »

the__alchemist wrote: post #284
wvenable wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.

You're not kidding! I did a deep dive into this a few months ago, and the alternative situation was dismal! LibreOffice is the closest, but its performance has room for improvement.

Microsoft 365 isn't just the office suite though. It's the office suite, email, PIM, chat, wiki/collaboration, document management, and a lot more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_365_applicat...

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#288

Post by otterley »

wvenable wrote: post #243
amanzi wrote: post #240

Here in NZ, pretty much all medium/large businesses and govt departments have gone all-in with M365. Most govt departments are on the E5 licence, and have also started to roll out the Copilot licences too. The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues. It's all the data stored in SharePoin…

> The cost and complexity and the effort required to switch away from M365 is massive. I'd say further to that is there literally isn't a similar product that exists to switch to. Nobody has developed a real alternative. It seems like most companies are more than willing to leave this entire market to Microsoft.

It depends on your needs. Many businesses get along fine with Google Apps or Zoho.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#289

Post by mecdu92 »

To be honest I still see Microsoft able to squeeze even more dollars from customers bexause at this stage most are really locked in and has no other choices unless their entire Information System collapses.

So happy for customers choosing to go all-in with Microsoft. I sincerely think that Microsoft had to pour a lot of $$$$ to IT managers across US and EU to 'lobby' them to adopt O365. I say this because two of my last contracts in France had a great wall for anything published on the Internet because RGPD/Security/Data, but magically the same people that, you better insult them than ask for a Public IP, adopted O365. Happy for all these companies, I hope they are squeezed even more.

Le me being layed off in April 2026 because the Cisco collaboration suite is phased out and the company goes all in with Teams. (I'm open to work in France)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#290

Post by justapassenger »

array_key_first wrote: post #188
justapassenger wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's many many cases that should likely not be using Excel. But given that Excel is the second-best tool for everything, world runs on it. And when you try to build systems to replace Excel for a specific task, you quickly learn how extremely powerful Excel is and how hard is to replace it and add value that customers would care about.

I've been there, the problem is that replacements are not as versatile or "floppy". But that's also a good thing, because Excel is too versatile to the point where most workbooks are filled with bugs on top of bugs and nobody cares.

Yes, bugs in sheets are worst part of excel, by far.

But many end users prefer dealing with bugs than with inflexible software that doesn’t understand all the different ways how real world is messy and hard to model.

I hate using Excel. But I 100% understand why world runs on it.

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