4 ms·

> Office 365 provides great value also. I think the cheapest version is $70 a year. I'm still using office 2007 which cost about the same but has lasted 10 yea

by rb808 9y ago

> Office 365 provides great value also. I think the cheapest version is $70 a year. I'm still using office 2007 which cost about the same but has lasted 10 years. I dont think this software rental trend is anything about great value.

caseysoftware 9y ago
I think it's different based on the use case. For a document editor or spreadsheet, continuous or even regular updates aren't important as long as it has the base features you need. When you have a CRM that integrates with other systems, an accounting package that has to stay up to date with policies and laws, or even an IDE that can support numerous languages, regular updates are more valuable and in some cases necessary. I used Office 2000 until I decommissioned my last Windows machine (dual boot even then) in 2010/11.
- hedora 9y ago
  For me, Office and Windows upgrades are just a useless time waster. I'd be happy with Office 2000 if it weren't for the fact that the only thing I use it for is collaboration. As a solution, I just set up a copy of Server 2016 Essentials, set the telemetry mode to "security" (which is easier said than done -- you have to go through an active directory server!) and installed Office 2016 Home + Student on it. The lowest price for that Office SKU is $75 on Amazon at the moment, but normal retail is about twice that. It looks like they support current office releases for about 4 years, so I figure $40/year if I stay on the upgrade train and pay full price. Server 2016 security updates end in 2026, and it retails for $400, so another $40/yr. This all goes in a VM running on a low wattage (already always on) box, so it will hopefully update + reboot itself when I'm not around. Time will tell. Electricity for my physical desktops running windows was $10's per month (windows refused to stay suspended...), and my incremental hardware costs are $0, so this is a lot less expensive than it looks. Plus, this gets rid of the vast majority of the Win 10 spyware in a supported way, and future proofs against most hardware compatibility problems.
int_19h 9y ago
That $70 is effectively a bundle with OneDrive, getting you 1 Tb of cloud storage. If you only need Office, and upgrade rarely, it doesn't make much sense. But seeing how many people pay similar money for Dropbox alone, for example, it can definitely be a great value proposition.
- pletnes 9y ago
  Dropbox + Libreoffice is similar, yes. Also dropbox is way faster, runs on linux, and easy to script against. Oh, and onedrive consistently crashes on my win 10. But yeah, feature-list-wise, onedrive isn't bad if you're a MS fanboy.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    That's weird that OneDrive crashes consistently on your W10. How much data do you have on it? It doesn't crash on our family computer which is always an old computer. And on Mac it crashes maybe once a quarter. I have hundreds of gigs on it so that's not so bad. MS fanboy remark seems weird. I'm guessing you'll just think I'm an MS fanboy. Which would be silly, I use Apple products far more among other companies. OneDrive might actually be the only Microsoft app I use consistently.
    - pletnes 9y ago
      Just a few gig in a directory at work. Gave up syncing it after spending several days alternating between crashing, eating 100% CPU, and popping up error messages. Yes 1 TB is nice but you can't get to it!
      - skinnymuch 9y ago
        Damn. This is OneDrive personal, not Business? You said work so if it's OneDrive for business that isn't really OneDrive. It's just their enterprise stuff with OneDrive as the name. Like Skype business or whatever they call that. Normal OneDrive which is what comes with the $80/year/5 people Office 365 isn't perfect. A few issues/features that they should have finished by now, but I'd be really surprised if regular OneDrive was causing those amt of issues.
NDizzle 9y ago
The standard edition which lists for $99/yr is ~$80/yr on Amazon and on sale elsewhere. That version is Office Home. Good for 5 people (like my family of 5) - Word / Excel / Powerpoint / Outlook / OneNote / Publisher / Access. 5 TB of OneDrive storage too. Look. No referral or anything - https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-1-year-subscription-users/dp/B009SPTUW2/ https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-1-year-subscription-... Great deal.
- princeb 9y ago
  the family feature is absolutely killer. equivalent office 2007 for 5 family members is like $750? That's 10 years of 365, with no feature update (if you like that sort of thing) and no onedrive.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Yeah i was surprised with this not being mentioned in the higher up comment lamenting $70/yr. $80/yr for 5 people has been great for us.
skinnymuch 9y ago
For $80 a year like our family has had for years, your get Office Home and OneDrive 1 TB per person for 5 people. It's a great deal. Is there any app that you use that wouldn't be covered by Office 365 Home edition?

by rb808 9y ago

caseysoftware 9y ago

I think it's different based on the use case. For a document editor or spreadsheet, continuous or even regular updates aren't important as long as it has the base features you need. When you have a CRM that integrates with other systems, an accounting package that has to stay up to date with policies and laws, or even an IDE that can support numerous languages, regular updates are more valuable and in some cases necessary. I used Office 2000 until I decommissioned my last Windows machine (dual boot even then) in 2010/11.

hedora 9y ago
For me, Office and Windows upgrades are just a useless time waster. I'd be happy with Office 2000 if it weren't for the fact that the only thing I use it for is collaboration. As a solution, I just set up a copy of Server 2016 Essentials, set the telemetry mode to "security" (which is easier said than done -- you have to go through an active directory server!) and installed Office 2016 Home + Student on it. The lowest price for that Office SKU is $75 on Amazon at the moment, but normal retail is about twice that. It looks like they support current office releases for about 4 years, so I figure $40/year if I stay on the upgrade train and pay full price. Server 2016 security updates end in 2026, and it retails for $400, so another $40/yr. This all goes in a VM running on a low wattage (already always on) box, so it will hopefully update + reboot itself when I'm not around. Time will tell. Electricity for my physical desktops running windows was $10's per month (windows refused to stay suspended...), and my incremental hardware costs are $0, so this is a lot less expensive than it looks. Plus, this gets rid of the vast majority of the Win 10 spyware in a supported way, and future proofs against most hardware compatibility problems.

int_19h 9y ago

That $70 is effectively a bundle with OneDrive, getting you 1 Tb of cloud storage. If you only need Office, and upgrade rarely, it doesn't make much sense. But seeing how many people pay similar money for Dropbox alone, for example, it can definitely be a great value proposition.

pletnes 9y ago
Dropbox + Libreoffice is similar, yes. Also dropbox is way faster, runs on linux, and easy to script against. Oh, and onedrive consistently crashes on my win 10. But yeah, feature-list-wise, onedrive isn't bad if you're a MS fanboy.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  That's weird that OneDrive crashes consistently on your W10. How much data do you have on it? It doesn't crash on our family computer which is always an old computer. And on Mac it crashes maybe once a quarter. I have hundreds of gigs on it so that's not so bad. MS fanboy remark seems weird. I'm guessing you'll just think I'm an MS fanboy. Which would be silly, I use Apple products far more among other companies. OneDrive might actually be the only Microsoft app I use consistently.
  - pletnes 9y ago
    Just a few gig in a directory at work. Gave up syncing it after spending several days alternating between crashing, eating 100% CPU, and popping up error messages. Yes 1 TB is nice but you can't get to it!
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      Damn. This is OneDrive personal, not Business? You said work so if it's OneDrive for business that isn't really OneDrive. It's just their enterprise stuff with OneDrive as the name. Like Skype business or whatever they call that. Normal OneDrive which is what comes with the $80/year/5 people Office 365 isn't perfect. A few issues/features that they should have finished by now, but I'd be really surprised if regular OneDrive was causing those amt of issues.

NDizzle 9y ago

The standard edition which lists for $99/yr is ~$80/yr on Amazon and on sale elsewhere. That version is Office Home. Good for 5 people (like my family of 5) - Word / Excel / Powerpoint / Outlook / OneNote / Publisher / Access. 5 TB of OneDrive storage too. Look. No referral or anything - https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-1-year-subscription-users/dp/B009SPTUW2/ https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-1-year-subscription-... Great deal.

princeb 9y ago
the family feature is absolutely killer. equivalent office 2007 for 5 family members is like $750? That's 10 years of 365, with no feature update (if you like that sort of thing) and no onedrive.
skinnymuch 9y ago
Yeah i was surprised with this not being mentioned in the higher up comment lamenting $70/yr. $80/yr for 5 people has been great for us.

skinnymuch 9y ago

For $80 a year like our family has had for years, your get Office Home and OneDrive 1 TB per person for 5 people. It's a great deal. Is there any app that you use that wouldn't be covered by Office 365 Home edition?