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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

#301

Post by shiroiuma »

rprend wrote: post #292
dabockster wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.

There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope.

Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold?

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#302

Post by tombert »

KapKap66 wrote: post #300
tombert wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cl…

Are you sure it still offers perpetual licenses? Because I just checked the Toonboom site and didn't see any. Maybe you got in before they enshittified too :)?

Looks like you are correct: https://www.reddit.com/r/ToonBoomHarmony/comments/1ktuhtv/to...

Glad I snagged it when I did (though admittedly it was probably a bad impulse purchase since I don't really animate much anymore).

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#303

Post by amanzi »

doubled112 wrote: post #287
the__alchemist wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Exactly - that's what I was trying point out in my original comment. The desktop office apps are actually reasonably easy to swap out for a large portion of people. It's the rest of the M365 suite which is massive.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#304

Post by acidburnNSA »

reactordev wrote: post #132
rawbot wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excel is the best spreadsheet software in my experience when you have to move beyond the basics. I’ve even tried hard to use the open/Libre alternatives. I agree 100% with this, since I've been trying the same. Although I do think some power-users take it way too far and should be using more robust data analysis tools (Python, DBs) instead of having these monstrous Excel spreadsheets with millions of rows and colum…

When all you know is Hammer... I agree and you'd be surprised at the response when I showed some of them how to do it in python numpy.

I tried showing a finance guy a Python version of a levelized cost of electricity spreadsheet he made. He laughed in my face and continued using Excel to drive executive decisions.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#305

Post by mrandish »

They need to raise prices to fund the new data centers for all the AI most Office customers didn't ask for and don't want.

It's annoying because for me the most useful parts of Office are OneNote and Publisher. OneNote being a neglected back-water app they obviously don't care about and Publisher actually being EOL in '26.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#306

Post by raincole »

mrandish wrote: post #305

They need to raise prices to fund the new data centers for all the AI most Office customers didn't ask for and don't want. It's annoying because for me the most useful parts of Office are OneNote and Publisher. OneNote being a neglected back-water app they obviously don't care about and Publisher actually being EOL in '26.

Weird view on how capitalism works. They raise prices because they (believe they) can and that's all. Prices are not tied to business cost. Even if all datacenters were subsidized by the government, this price rising would still happen.

Microsoft is basically a B2B now. Their customers are those who use Team and Exchange. Those customers are locked in and with no real alternative to migrate to.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#307

Post by delichon »

raincole wrote: post #306
mrandish wrote: post #305

They need to raise prices to fund the new data centers for all the AI most Office customers didn't ask for and don't want. It's annoying because for me the most useful parts of Office are OneNote and Publisher. OneNote being a neglected back-water app they obviously don't care about and Publisher actually being EOL in '26.

Weird view on how capitalism works. They raise prices because they (believe they) can and that's all. Prices are not tied to business cost. Even if all datacenters were subsidized by the government, this price rising would still happen. Microsoft is basically a B2B now. Their customers are those who use Team and Exchange. Those customers are locked in and with no real alternative to migrate to.

I meet people who seem to believe that a platonic fair price exists for each transaction, that it is knowable and even obvious to the seller, and the ones who ask more are guilty of avarice.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#308

Post by xstas1 »

shiroiuma wrote: post #301
rprend wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.

There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not in…

They're working on it.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#309

Post by thelittleone »

paradox460 wrote: post #217
mdasen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point? I remember when Microsoft Office truly felt like a monopoly. In the 90s, nothing could really read/write Microsoft formats reliably. People weren't using PDFs as much and teachers, jobs, etc. all expected you to be sending them .doc files. Yes, Microsoft wrote the spec fox .docx, but submitted it as an ECMA standard and that meant that people could create alternatives that could read/write .docx quite…

I got a bad grade in a highschool English class because the teacher didn't like the doc file generated by StarOffice. My dad came round the school raising hell and got her to grade the paper on contents, saying if they wanted me to have office they could buy a copy of it. I got an A- after that

That's good fathering. Respect.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#310

Post by lovich »

shiroiuma wrote: post #301
rprend wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.

There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not in…

Every now and then I forget why the common man hates our industry nowadays, but luckily this forum always reminds me
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