Discussion on:

Microsoft Office 2013 is now available

I tried Office 2013 and I do like it but not as a cloud service that costs money to use via the Internet. I remember with Office 2003 Student and Teachers Edition can be used on 3 machines but now you can use it one. Very costly move to upgrade and 2007 and 2010 do the most of things that 2013 can do.

Already purchased Office 2013 via company's HUP. $10 USD is tough to beat, and a minimal risk. So far my feeling is . . . . . meh.

There are too many new versions of office.
We tend to wait a few years. We only recently got everyone to office 2007 from 2000. I am running 2010 on my machine because I like how outlook remembers your password of which it refuses to in 2007.
2013 offers nothing so I see no reason to upgrade.

What if next year, it's $199.99. What will you do then? Have to repurchase the stand alone? Pony up? You can't control the cost of a subscription.

Since most people send & receive files, it's absolutely stupid to try to get them to change software every 3 years.

As stated by others, I'm sure many people will be OK with Ooo etc. These packages are still a little bit flaky in parts, and lack some basic facilities. Since government agencies are now strongly encouraged to use them, perhaps the governments in question could be persuaded to finance the finishing touches. We really must start getting ready to welcome the post-MS era.

Let's face it, for 99.9% of home users, Libre or Open Office is more than adequate. They don't need to exchange documents with others and home documents are typically far less demanding than work documents. GoogleDocs will work too if they want a cloud solution. The point is MS Office is massive overkill at home.

For students I guess it really depends on your school. They are a special category and they get special pricing anyway. I can see the subscription model being ideal for them. They can use it while they're in school and then jump off to Open, Libre, or Google when they're finished with school.

The situation is a lot more complex for businesses. Small businesses that don't need to exchange documents with outsiders could probably get along just fine with the free stuff. It gets harder for bigger businesses or anyone that has to exchange electronic copies with clients. MS Office is the defacto standard, so you have to have it if you expect to be viewed as a professional organization. I don't see big businesses using the online version though. The big boys will use installed copies.

It brings up another thought though. If you had an office of a couple hundred folks using the cloud version, how would that impact the network? Would everything slow to a crawl? Could be a hidden "gotcha".

If youre also trying Windows 8 Release Preview, be sure to check out the OneNote Preview in the Windows Store. Keep your notes, pictures, voice memos, and web pages in one easy to access place so you have them when you need them.

i think you forgot something, which operating systems will Office 2013 work with.
Windows XP?
Windows 7?
Windows 8?
Apple Mac OS?

But that is Client related as they have to provide Tenders in .doc format not .docX which is still unreadable by any of the Government Departments yet.

Not an issue for the big places with dedicated staff to write the tenders but a real issue for the smaller places who are some of my clients who do not have that type of staff and who do much more than just sit in front of a computer every day doing whatever.

I currently have both 2003 & 2010 loaded and can drop into if necessary but personally yet I'm not considering 2013 for anything but Backward Licenses and loading 2003.

Col

Two correspondents mentioned the need to have MS Office for schools.

It isn't the business of schools to advertise or impose proprietary products, particularly when there exist free alternatives which are perfectly adequate for normal educational purposes. There may be (should be?) laws about that, depending on your country.

MS seem to have a pricing policy for institutions that is designed to get users hooked. I saw that at an English University a decade or so ago. Basically it would have been too much trouble for their IT department to provide an alternative, and (I'm trying to be polite) LaTeX and OOo can be frustrating. The story reminds me about driving schools that get their cars free because a fair percentage of people who pass the driving test will go for the model they learned in.

I was extremely disappointed that Access 2013 doesn't support Data Access Projects (adp) files.

Since when did you hire comedy writers? Oh, I mean when did M$ hire comedy writers. The notion of them performing any type of 'service' has zero appeal to me. They have yet to design and distribute an OS that works out of the box. The patches start before the issue date; I can get software suites free that perform as well; at worst I can spend $20 and get a fully functioning production suite equal to Office.
The only worse source of service that I would not consider is Google - you cannot talk to anyone at Google. No one cares about you. At least M$ will respond to inquiries. So for businesses and professionals I would recommend M$ way before Google.
Let's face it though, if M$ WANTS to be only a service, they will be. No one can stop them now.
I would point out that they were going to be a great force in the gaming world too...

Still using 2007 personally, and at the office many are still using Office XP and 2003. 2010 really only offered enough advantage if using Share Point, which is still too expensive for most, (though I would love to be able to use it where I work, but there is no way they will pay the price). I don't see any good reason to upgrade or to put my work in the cloud, with so much things being hacked these days. I faith in the security of the data is not great. Nope, no reason to spend scarce funds on needless upgrades.

promytius1 said:

"I can get software suites free that perform as well; at worst I can spend $20 and get a fully functioning production suite equal to Office."

This is fine as long as you are never sharing files with anyone or EVERYONE you share files with is using the same program. There are dozens of ways, for example, OpenOffice does not play nice with any version of Word.

rciadan said: "2010 really only offered enough advantage if using Share Point"

This is nonsense. I never use Share Point and used 2003 until 2010 was mature. I skipped 2007 because it was known to be buggy. There are many, many advantages in 2010 over 2003: Apparently you have never used it. It's like comparing a BMW to a Ford Pinto. I'm not convinced 2013 is worth it, regardless of the option chosen (service vs standalone).

What support do you get with the Subscription Version? Last summer I tried the preview version and found I could not send email in Outlook to more than one addressee at a time. There was a lot of blogs about this on the Microsoft Community Support site but no resolution. I went back to Outlook 2010 (which works fine). I'd buy the subscription if I was confident my issue was fixed and could get support for other issues.

I was initially interested in the subscription model for home, but if I can't work on files from work, at least according to the licence, it's of little or no use.

I've just loaded it at work and IT SURE IS UGLY WITH THE ALL CAPS RIBBON TITLES & STATUS BAR MESSAGES!

What madness it this?