Is it time to dump Microsoft Office?

[GTP]

https://www.pcauthority.com.au/feature/is-it-time-to-dump-microsoft-office-493652

 

[Metanis]

10 years ago even!

 

[mstoveken]

Office 365 is worth it, if only just for the Outlook features. I'm a Thunderbird convert who hated Outlook for many years and now would never switch back after moving to Outlook 2016 on Office 365 Exchange.

 

[fencepost]

On a personal basis I regard O365 as worth it for my personal PCs and phone/tablets - just for the cloud storage aspect where it's half the price of other options (and yes, I could roll my own, etc. but no. I regard rolling my own like I do water-cooled overclocking of Celerons and fart can mufflers on Honda Civics. If I want a hobby, I want something better than making sure my cloud storage keeps working.)

The only drawback I've had with it is that apparently Onedrive has some path restrictions that prevent it from being used as an encrypted destination for Cloudberrylab file-based backups.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Boy they really missed the bus there. Sooo many more features of O365 that they happily underplayed or even over-looked...focused on trying to just compare O365 to what we did 20 years ago, 1x time purchase of the Office 97 CD!

 

[mstoveken]

Boy they really missed the bus there. Sooo many more features of O365 that they happily underplayed or even over-looked...focused on trying to just compare O365 to what we did 20 years ago, 1x time purchase of the Office 97 CD!

To be fair to the writers of that article, that's how most business use Office. Most of them don't take advantage of a lot of features of Office and those are the ones who really complain when you try to sell them a subscription-based product. "Why would I want to keep paying for something for years when I can just buy it once? I don't need to upgrade every 3 years." The most frustrating type of clients of all time and unfortunately that's most clients. At least in my experience anyway.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

To be fair to the writers of that article, that's how most business use Office. Most of them don't take advantage of a lot of features of Office and those are the ones who really complain when you try to sell them a subscription-based product..

All I've done for 25+ years is IT for SMB, I don't/never did residential.
The traction for small to medium businesses to use "other stuff" in O365 is growing.
Larger businesses...from medium to larger, fortune 500, etc, they'll be doing Volume Licensing anyways for MS Office, they wouldn't utilize O365. Even our larger clients use Volume Licensing.

But for O365 and the smaller to medium, I think most really don't know the value of O365 thanks to their IT people not knowing, and failing to show the actual value of it. Hell even magazines (points a finger to that article above)...fail to do it.

In its simplest form yes it's an installation of the full MS Office Pro Plus suite. And some users know you can install it on up to 5x computers per user. But that value rarely gets factored in. And when a new version comes out, you get it.

OneDrive4Biz...lotta our clients using it now, nice to have an integrated file sync like this. DropBox for Business ain't free! 12.50 per user per month!

Sharepoint...similar to above. Finding cloud storage for sharing across the business isn't cheap!

EMail filtering..the basic package is included. Going 3rd party for email filtering is typically 1.50 to 3.00 per mailbox per month.

Mobile Device Manager...typically that's another 3-7 dollars per user per month

Encrypted e-mail services, that's typically another at least 5 - 10 dollars per mailbox service

Not to mention true business grade email that isn't crippled with puny 25 gig mailbox limits or 10 meg max file attachment sizes like many other email accounts, and has all those other good useful collaboration things businesses use. Distie groups, teams, public folders, aliases, external contacts, etc etc etc etc etc

Ease of installing on new computers, say goodbye to "losing that license", or having the IT guy volunteer an hour or so trying to help you find your key or run a key sniffer on your dead computers old hard drive to recover an install key. Lots of people forget that there is a cost to managing licenses or installs, and someone might be stuck spending a lot of time...could be volunteer time, or time added to your bill from the IT guy. I know I want to move on after about 10 minutes of no luck finding a key.

I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting to mention but those are the quick ones that come to mind.

Once the IT person puts on their sales hat and describes these things, clients can then see the value and have no problem with it, even actually like it.

 

[TAPtech]

MICROSOFT FAN CLUB: UNITE!!

Anything that is as entrenched as Microsoft is going to get some hate. Sure, if we could start fresh with something different it might be better. Oh well, it ain't, and here we are. Get good at Microsoft and using the new stuff like Outlook Groups, Teams, etc. That's where business is!

 

[sapphirescales]

Office 365 is a freaking RIP OFF, just like all SaaS software. Unless you need to buy Office Professional on a bunch of computers, Office 365 just doesn't make sense. Buy it once for $149 and get 10 years of support, or pay $99/year for 10 years for $1,000. Let's see...would I rather pay $150 or $1,000? Gee, what a tough choice.

On the other hand, if I had 5 computers that I need to buy Office Professional on for $400 a pop, that's $2,000 for 10 years of support vs. $1,000. That's when it makes sense. But that's not most people or businesses. Most people and businesses only use Word/Excel. Some use Publisher or Access, but they're in the minority. And they certainly don't need to use it on 5 computers. Office 365 is just a scam by Microsoft to get paid every freaking month/year for the same d*mned product. I mean, really. What's the difference between Office 2007 / 2010 / 2013 / 2016 for the average user? A color change? The only practical benefit is that it's easier to set up email in Outlook in the newer versions of Office. The average user notices NO difference other than the color.

 

[GTP]

Out of the 20 SMB/SoHo businesses I support, only 3 use Office 365 in a subscription setting. The rest use standalone versions of Office from 2007 to 2016, 1 uses GSuite, some use just plain old Gmail.
They use Word, Excel, (1 uses PowerPoint) and OUTLOOK.
I have some clients that purchased a standalone copy of MS Office 2013/2016 - install it then setup up an email account with outlook.com!
They have no idea that Outlook and outlook.com are actually separate things!
After explaining to them about the difference only 1 changed back to Outlook, the others preferring to keep the "status quo."

And as for telling customers about all the benefits and features of Office 365, it goes in one ear and out the other, because they don't/wont use those features - especially for xxx per month when they can buy it outright.

 

[callthatgirl]

All and any Microsoft is money in my pocket. WIN!

 

[callthatgirl]

"Buy it once for $149 and get 10 years of support" not anymore, they charge.

 

[callthatgirl]

" What's the difference between Office 2007 / 2010 / 2013 / 2016 for the average user?" Um, a lot?

 

[Sky-Knight]

" What's the difference between Office 2007 / 2010 / 2013 / 2016 for the average user?" Um, a lot?

A lot... seriously... (No sarcasm, the different editions have substantial upgrades in Outlook alone)

2016s ability to manipulate PDFs is a HUGE thing, that's very often over looked.

And as much as I'm with Sapphire on SaaS being a ripoff, Office 365 isn't one of them. The hosted Exchange environment and Sharepoint online alone sell it, then there's the license tracking, the fact that everyone in the company has the same version of office, on EVERYTHING, all the time?!?

Any one of these points is enough to show the value. For home users? Yeah... we've got something to talk about here. But any business that isn't using O365 at this point is just leaving money on the table.

Of course, that also means it's in our best interest at times to support the old stuff. After all, they have to pay us more to manage it.

 

[nerd2u]

Switched to google apps for work. No per PC license which I love as I have about 6 PC's I use.

Everything is synced to google drive and cost me 5$ a month.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[sapphirescales]

"Buy it once for $149 and get 10 years of support" not anymore, they charge.

I'm talking about security updates. I couldn't care less about Abdu from Microsoft's call center in India "supporting" me.

" What's the difference between Office 2007 / 2010 / 2013 / 2016 for the average user?" Um, a lot?

That a normal person uses? Not much. Maybe big businesses, and I'm sure your type of client uses all these crazy features, but the average person just uses it to type and make spreadsheets. Most residential and small business clients don't even use an email client, Outlook or otherwise.

A lot... seriously... (No sarcasm, the different editions have substantial upgrades in Outlook alone)

2016s ability to manipulate PDFs is a HUGE thing, that's very often over looked.

But your average computer user isn't going to be messing around with PDF's in Word. And once they get their email set up in Outlook, all they really care about is that they click on their email and it opens. I'm not saying that no one uses these more advanced features (I sure do), but your average computer illiterate client isn't messing around with all this crap. They're typing up their documents, maybe editing a spreadsheet, and using Edge to view PDF files. If they have Outlook, they click on their email to read it and they're done.

THIS is why Microsoft is absolutely OBSESSED about getting everyone on Office 365. They're out of ideas. You can only do so much to improve a word processor. Nowadays people only buy a new copy of Office if they buy a new computer and lose their old disk. They couldn't care less what version they're running. That's not a very reliable income stream for Microsoft. The word processor market is a mature market. It's replacement only for the most part. Companies HATE that.

 

[Sky-Knight]

THIS is why Microsoft is absolutely OBSESSED about getting everyone on Office 365. They're out of ideas. You can only do so much to improve a word processor. Nowadays people only buy a new copy of Office if they buy a new computer and lose their old disk. They couldn't care less what version they're running. That's not a very reliable income stream for Microsoft. The word processor market is a mature market. It's replacement only for the most part. Companies HATE that.

Both true, yet not. The basic functionality of a word processor creates documents, and the nature of those documents is changing. But that is largely for businesses only, and mostly in how those documents are stored, indexed, and accessed. Home users just need to have something that's patch-able, because Outlook, Word, and Excel are just as critical for updates as anything else. That's where all the costs show up. Software doesn't have to reinvent its base feature set to derive value, not in a world where the costs of maintenance of said software are constant.

Of course, if you have a client that doesn't have Internet access, sure, use ancient stuff. But as soon as it goes online, you'd better be patched or bad things will happen.

And if you have clients still using Outlook 2010 or older, you should get them to upgrade just for the search features in Outlook 2016... I can't find anything without that little box, and even my 90 year old clients are using it, and loving it.

 

[nerd2u]

Let's not forget there are completely open sourced office suites out there. They don't have all the bells and whistles but will type up a word document just the same.

I know a lot of people that insist they need Microsoft office but never use any of the advanced features.

I see customers all the time that could get by on a Linux OS and libre office

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[sapphirescales]

Both true, yet not. The basic functionality of a word processor creates documents, and the nature of those documents is changing. But that is largely for businesses only, and mostly in how those documents are stored, indexed, and accessed. Home users just need to have something that's patch-able, because Outlook, Word, and Excel are just as critical for updates as anything else. That's where all the costs show up. Software doesn't have to reinvent its base feature set to derive value, not in a world where the costs of maintenance of said software are constant.

Of course, if you have a client that doesn't have Internet access, sure, use ancient stuff. But as soon as it goes online, you'd better be patched or bad things will happen.

And if you have clients still using Outlook 2010 or older, you should get them to upgrade just for the search features in Outlook 2016... I can't find anything without that little box, and even my 90 year old clients are using it, and loving it.

Exactly. I try to get everyone on Office 2010 or older to upgrade, same as any client that walks in running Windows 7 (and Windows 8, though they're both technically still supported). I'm not saying that change isn't necessary. I'm saying that paying every month/year for said change isn't a good value for most people.

Let's not forget there are completely open sourced office suites out there. They don't have all the bells and whistles but will type up a word document just the same.

I know a lot of people that insist they need Microsoft office but never use any of the advanced features.

I see customers all the time that could get by on a Linux OS and libre office

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

It's all about familiarity and 100% compatibility with their documents originally created in Microsoft Office. Most clients don't like change, and only do it when it's absolutely necessary. They're willing to pay the $149 in order to keep using the software they're familiar with for years and years into the future.

To be honest, I'm the same way when it comes to Microsoft Office (Word in particular). I've tried many different word processors over the years, but none of them feel the same as Microsoft Office. It's hard to explain, but MS Office is just more polished and smoother to use. The closest I've found is Ahampoo Office 2016, but I still don't like it anywhere near as much as Microsoft Office. I liked AppleWorks (later called Claris Works) back in the 90's, but unfortunately it was discontinued and only worked on Macs anyway.

Nope, I'll be using Microsoft Office for the forseeable future. I really only use Word nowadays (I'm no longer in school so I don't need to do half the stuff with it that I used to do). Outlook sucks. I mean, it has always sucked. 2016 is the best version so far, but it still sucks. I prefer using the built in Windows 10 Mail app. Before that I just used webmail. The last time I actually used Outlook personally was back in 1997, and a brief time in 2003. Then I went to webmail and have been using that until Windows 10 came out with the Windows 10 Mail app.

I also access mail through the Mail app on my iPhone, and through a mail program called MailBird and EMClient (though I don't really like Mailbird or EMClient). Most email clients really suck. They're too complicated for everyday use, and the text is so tiny (I'm not talking about the text size of the emails themselves, which can be easily changed, but the text sizes that the program uses). Either that or the colors hurt my eyes, or they have functionality issues. If I couldn't use the Windows 10 Mail app, I'd still be using webmail. I have my email hosted through G Suite (formerly Google Apps at Work). I'd just go to gmail.com and log in if the Windows 10 Mail app didn't exist.

 

[TechLady]

Let's not forget there are completely open sourced office suites out there. They don't have all the bells and whistles but will type up a word document just the same.

I know a lot of people that insist they need Microsoft office but never use any of the advanced features.

I see customers all the time that could get by on a Linux OS and libre office

Correct. I only install LibreOffice for residential now. There's absolutely NO need for MS in residential. None. Grandmas don't need mail merge.