Office might be
needed in large corporations, or maybe not. The home user or small business has no need for it, as the free alternatives serve fine. Outlook has always been full of holes and impossible to use (for me anyway) and I just use web-based mail. A large corporation probably has their own server that has nothing to do with Outlook. A small company doesn't need it, and the home user certainly doesn't.
It's too complicated to use, and is too integrated with the ms Office suites to be of any use to anyone who doesn't use them. Office itself got much harder to use with the "ribbon" and I refuse to have any version newer than 2003, even with the "search" function. I heard somewhere that in 2013 you can turn off the stupid ribbon. IF that's true and I had any use for it, I might reconsider, IF ms would make it available for free, as are most other office applications. Why pay for something you won't use?
