Switched to the free OnlyOffice a year ago and never looked back: https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE
Calligra (KDE Office Suite) is also pretty interesting but currently Linux-only https://calligra.org/
Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
531–540 of 593 posts
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
> drug lord tactics to keep its users. What on earth are you talking about? Companies switch from MS to Google Workspace all the time. It's a huge logistical challenge, not because of anything Microsoft does, but just because they're different systems and migrating data and processes is inherently hard.
> Companies switch from MS to Google Workspace all the time. To my knowledge, Google is a worse "data kraken" than Microsoft, so companies are very hesitant to switch to Google; in the companies' opinion such a switch would be a switch from "bad" to "horrific".
I don't know what you're basing any of that on. I've never heard of such a thing. Like, on the lists of enterprise pros and cons of migrating from MS365 to Workspace, I've never once heard of that.
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did Google give up? Google Workspace is extremely popular with new features coming out constantly, used by tons of corporations. Is it just not on your radar or something?
They don’t have customer support. Otherwise, they would make much larger inroads. Most businesses don’t want to take the risk migrating to paid Google services for that reason.
That's wrong, I don't know where you're getting your information. Enterprise plans absolutely provide support, and I've never heard of that being a sticking point in migration to Google. Are you confusing it with the free consumer versions?
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a normal user isn't going to setup AD either. This will be done by sysadmins anyway, so stuff like being able to put the configuration into version control is actually useful for them. The "normal business" has lots of employee databases anyways and integration is actually a feature instead of needing to sync it with bespoke Microsoft internals.
So you can hook up all those internal employee databases to your new created libpam-mysql and hook it up all to slack or just use what Microsoft sells you.
> your new created libpam-mysql
I do not need to create it, it already exists. Yes, you can write your own pam module, but in general you do not need to.
> just use what Microsoft sells you.
Which means now your employees need to manually sync the MS and your internal databases. Depends on how much your employees time is worth for you. I mean a lot of companies do exactly that, but it is certainly not the cheaper option.
Also using what MS sells is also illegal. Not that anyone cares, as whole Europe ignores that, but when you meet a civil servant on the wrong foot, your company is toast.
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suggesting libreoffice as an alternative to Office 365 is crazy.
Why? What feature does office 365 have that is so difficult to replace? I'm guessing support but... is there something more obvious? Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
You are many levels deep in a thread that answers the very question you are asking. From the OP:
> It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues.
It goes on!
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
> drug lord tactics to keep its users. What on earth are you talking about? Companies switch from MS to Google Workspace all the time. It's a huge logistical challenge, not because of anything Microsoft does, but just because they're different systems and migrating data and processes is inherently hard.
> Companies switch from MS to Google Workspace all the time. To my knowledge, Google is a worse "data kraken" than Microsoft, so companies are very hesitant to switch to Google; in the companies' opinion such a switch would be a switch from "bad" to "horrific".
so what is the choice? build an in-house office suite (and all the extra functionality)? use a sub-par alternative that doesn't even cover all the features?
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#537Most 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.
> Most people using excel and word would be just as functional using office '98. This is just not at all true of the professional world. Home and student use, sure, but in business the office suite is deeply tied into workflows, business processes, approvals, review flows, version control, data analysis, data warehouses, and so much more. There are companies that for all intents and purposes run on Excel. This goes f…
op looked at their way of using the tool and assumed everyone else used it the same limited way
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft is a buffet. You can get anything you want but it’s rare people leave a buffet saying “Man that food was great!” Usually people go to different places for different things of better quality. This is clear because there are lots of very successful competing products to Microsoft’s buffet. The only moat I’d say Microsoft actually has is Excel. And maybe Powerpoint. Everything else can be replaced easily and o…
> This is clear because there are lots of very successful competing products to Microsoft’s buffet. Is there? Maybe Google docs. It's amazing that Microsoft has, for the most part, not really changed their fundamental office software for over a decade and yet there is very little actual competition. People call it bland but I've yet to see any real competition to the whole package.
There’s significantly more to their offering than the office suite
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN. It’s not ironic at all. Posting here was deliberate to highlight the bubble that happens here for consumer products. This comment section has a lot of people evaluating these price hikes as if they were targeted at HN individual users, not for a product targeted at a different audiences and corporate subscriptions. Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that th…
I broadly agree with you but the AI demand part is more nuanced. Demand is very large for consumer-ish apps like ChatGPT and Sora, but even Claude, which is huge for coding and arguably the best model right now, is tiny. I've had an interaction with someone nontechnical who, after seeing the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my ChatGPT had fireworks. Yeah, the demand is there, but I have a hard time believing nontechn…
i have an acquaintance that uses chatgpt to ask it the lotto numbers. people are definitely using the tool, the purpose may vary.
Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
HarmonyOS is gaining a lot of traction in China and has WPS pre-installed https://www.wps.com I've never used it but apparently it comes with ingame purchases.
Which is perfectly fine for China, but no western government or company who hopes to do business with them will consider this, and for good reason.
hah, my comment appears much more naive than I thought possible.
WPS apparently has 80% market share in Chinese government and state owned enterprise. They used MS from 2000-2005, In 2006 they released Uniform Office Format (UOF) which MS doesn't support(!?) UOF works better with Chinese fonts. 2012 Kingsoft offered Enterprise WPS and became the standard.