Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#151

Post by hoistbypetard » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #75

hoistbypetard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For legacy spreadsheets, you're 100% correct. I'll need to keep a version of Excel around forever. If they price me out of 365 by making me pay for Copilot shit I don't use or want, a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs about $20 and will do that job for me. For new work that I might have otherwise done in Excel, there are good options. Collabora works. Libre Office works. Google sheets works. And Grist is quite go…

None of the things you listed are suitable replacements for Excel. None. It has nothing to do with existing files/compatibility. Excel is unparalleled.

That depends on your workload. I've been using Excel since 1993, and I find the things I've listed help me get things done just as well as Excel does, unless I have a pile of macros and vbscript I need to interop with.

This is not theoretical; I learned it by needing to get shit done in a context where having an activated copy of Excel wasn't practical. Excel was paralleled and in one case surpassed.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#152

Post by jraph » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

piker wrote: post #145

jraph wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to compete. That's not what I'm saying. You can thrive with an open source business model. I'm working for such a company. Falsewoods software founders still believe about free and open source software in 2026 1. That's it's 100% made unpaid, outside business despite the numerous clues that it's not (note to whom might read this thread: I edited my previous comment…

That business model exists and appears here periodically complaining about how unfair Microsoft is. We don't care, we'll meet Microsoft where they are and just offer their customers a more specific solution.

Then make this specific solution open source, and make the laywers pay for support and roadmap decisions / features they require! Make them pay for integrations with Azure AD and struff like this! Make them pay for the binary! The possibilities are endless, it can work!

You can aim for better than "where MS is".

This could constitute a killer argument to make your solution appealing.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#153

Post by Krssst » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #42

boh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Office, Libre Office, Only Office to start.

I want to love these, mostly because they're FOSS and Office/Google Spreadsheets seems to get more and more bloated, and subsequently slower. But the UX is just a lot worse, and it isn't easy to go from one application to another because they're slightly different enough that your productivity takes a hit from all the small papercuts. I'm waiting for some FOSS spreadsheet solution that doesn't just try to copy Office…

LibreOffice seems to have an optional ribbon-like interface for the people that happen to like it (View -> User Interface) (but I don't use this UI mode as I personally find ribbon-like UIs hard to work with).

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#154

Post by Terretta » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

traceroute66 wrote: post #134

dybber wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for publisher there probably isn’t the same network effect as for Word/Excel/Powerpoint.

> And for publisher there probably isn’t the same network effect as for Word/Excel/Powerpoint. There isn't because any serious print shop will laugh you out the door if you come to them with a Publisher file. Publisher is fine for home/office printing, and you will probably get away with it at your local corner shop that does digital printing on a Xerox box in the back of the shop. But if you're sending stuff off to…

> There isn't because any serious print shop will laugh you out the door if you come to them with a Publisher file.

You say this like customers don't show up with a PowerPoint file.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#155

Post by ochronus » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

Ooooh but it has AI ;) blergh

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#156

Post by Terretta » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

jfindper wrote: post #87

jjgreen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business basic goes from $6 to $7 So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%?

Percentages are fun because they can make something with a small absolute change look like a giant change. No business is really going to care about $1.00/user, especially when it costs hundreds of dollars per user (or thousands) to migrate entirely away from the Microsoft ecosystem.

For an enterprise with fungible employees there is nothing cogent to migrate to.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#157

Post by nottorp » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

hoistbypetard wrote: post #146

moepstar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs about $20 and will do that job for me. Isn’t that only perpetual as long as the activation servers are up?

Probably. I meant "perpetual" as opposed to "subscription" but I agree with your concern.

You just stash a cracked version downloaded off some high seas site just in case.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#158

Post by layer8 » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

benterix wrote: post #43

wongarsu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd still consider Excel best in class

While I agree, there is no reason NOT to use a perpetual license (e.g. for Excel 2016), unless you really, really need the subscription-based version. You may notice the last edition of softwares that had perpetual licenses but moved on to subscription model tend to be very expensive today as they are no longer sold and people know how to count. So, let's use the opportunity while it lasts as I don't believe the end…

I wish standalone versions were still standard, but the latest Excel versions have been adding really useful features in the core formula language.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#159

Post by AnonHP » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

boh wrote: post #25

If most companies had to for some reason revert to Windows XP and MS Office from 1998, they would barely be impacted. There is literally no benefit to this subscription model besides paying for what you already have and what you don't want. None of this stuff needs to be on the cloud even for bigger firms. For the I need/like X in Office 365, it's not worth it from a costs perspective.

> If most companies had to for some reason revert to Windows XP and MS Office from 1998, they would barely be impacted.

But what about the impact of increased productivity when not having to deal with the garbage that are New Teams and New Outlook? The employees would start doing more in lesser time and the companies could potentially make more profits too. Why would they want that if they could just be locked in with Microsoft month-on-month? /s

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#160

Post by quietbritishjim » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

spogbiper wrote: post #125

quietbritishjim wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Publisher (2.0! and then 95) quite a bit in the mid to late 1990s. I haven't used it since then because Word now has all the features that were previously exclusive to Publisher, so its purpose has evaporated. It's certainly true that Word has bugs and frustrations but I'd be surprised if Publisher didn't too. It's very odd that they propose PowerPoint as the Publisher replacement. How do you create a fold out…

> How do you create a fold out leaflet in PowerPoint!? There appear to be templates for this in Powerpoint

You need more than a template if you're going to make a booklet by folding a piece of paper in 4 - half of the "pages" (quarter pages) need to be upside down.

In truth, I haven't tried this in Word either, although it appears to be possible in page setup. Maybe I just stopped using Publisher when I started getting duplex printers. Or even stopped needing silly layouts for school projects.