Discussion on:

Office 2013 licensing changes increase IT angst

We are, but where does machine-locked software play in a network-is-the-machine world? How about you lock it to a virtual machine?

There are government entities and critical infrastructure units that have desktop clients which run on Office. The Public Cloud is NOT technically an option... try convincing government entities into saving and modifying critical, sensitive and confidential data using the Office 365, knowing that this data is not going to be temporarily/permanently stored on local soil espescially with contract clauses always subject to change. Lets say there may be a clause in there that indicates that data would be cleared immediately, but how does one audit that. Somehow this shift does not seem to bode well... there is trouble in 'em waters.

Another point of note is the value of the data stored by entities on MS 365. What is to stop intelligent parsers which could be used for things like analytics... target marketing... similar to what most of the mail providers and social networking sites do today. The aim is to first get people on board and when out at sea thats when things turn...

Is there a slight chance that Microsoft may have plans for the Office 365 server? Like most of its other offerings... the Standard/Enterprise Office 365 Server for Private (sigh) "Cloud" infrastructures... need to stay tuned for a while before the decision to switch channels.

your comment of this is "...a reflection of the times we live in - we are living in a networked, always on, cloud-based, software as a service world and we are going to have to come to terms with it" is a simple-minded, one sided view of the issue. As a business there is no way in hell I would purchase office 365, I would have to double, or more, my internet connection to deal with all the additional traffic. And going from a 20MB Synchronous fiber (already over $1000 a month) to 40MB or more would kill my IT budget. Also take into account that Office 365 saves files to Microsoft Sky-Drive, not to local servers like we currently do, so how do I control it? What if my Internet link goes down, ALL business would stop dead, period.

I know SaaS models are the sexy thing to talk about in the IT media, it's all whiz bang, but I am sorry, it just isn't there yet. As a business there are too many gotcha's. Going all online is fine for individuals and small/startup companies with always-on links who live near major cities, but for medium to large companies, or companies that aren't located near solid always-on Internet access, SaaS is not a viable alternative yet. Once I have 100Mb or better links anywhere in the world, I will consider it. But even then there will be security concerns about having an outside company handle all my data for me.

With open source alternatives such as Libre Office, it amazes me that so many people fork over hundreds of dollars for MS Office. There no doubt are times when it is better to go that way, but not very often.

"The only reason for installing M$ Office is to practice uninstalling software. If you don't need to practice, it's not even good for that." -- {DvT}Hex (1999)

Nothing has changed in the past 14+ years.

Does Microsoft figure that home users who rarely pay for software upgrades will cop this? I think not. I know hundreds of home users we support will stay with what they have until it no longer works, most of these still run Office 2003 and reuse it when they upgrade machines.

To license to a specific device is stupid. We pay for the software to use ourselves, we should be able to install it onto what ever machine we want, and move it when we want without having to inform MS.

Another convert to Open Source i'm afraid. Our clients love OS

I have been reading time and time again that Microsoft is introducing their new subscription deal as customers are not bothering to upgrade from office 2003 and earlier, and they are desperate to find a way to re-capture these revenue streams. This is partly due to the huge selling price of with little new in the way of functionality.

The new subscription model makes the package "look" more affordable, but of course if you do the maths it soon becomes clear that you end up paying the same or more, just in installments. Very smart from their perspective.

However, the main reason I never moved on from Office 2003 (other than the fact they castrated the Access database profram) was the ghastly new interface. I dislike the ribbons with a passion and have not met a single person who has had anything positive to say about them. Of course the forums are full of people who push them for professional reasons ("I'll train you for cash") or simply for fun. In reality most people say that they "survive" the ribbons but certainly do not "like" them.

So when you decide if you should take the leap into the subscription model make sure you have done your sums and ask if you really need to do it.. Or if you are only tempted as it appears at first glance to be good value.

I have now switched to LibreOffice and a more than happy with the later releases. I open and save in traditional office file formats and I have not found any functionality missing.

For email I use The Bat as it can handle my massive email traffic better than Outlook. Google calander provides the best way to share my agenda with multiple devices and users.

Sorry Microsoft, but you are telling users that they need to get used to a more modern way of working, but the way I see it you are simply desperate not to loose more paying customers.