MS Office 2013 Pushing Home Users Toward Subscriptions

An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports that Microsoft has announced pricing plans for Office 2013 that include a subscription-based model for home users. There will be a $100/year Home version that can be shared by up to 5 users and a $150/year Small Business version. 'Subscription software of one form or another has proven popular in the enterprise (whether it be cloud services, like Office 365, or subscriptions to desktop software, such as Microsoft's Software Assurance scheme). But so far it's a rarity in the consumer space. Anti-virus software has tried to bully and cajole users into getting aboard the subscription train, but the large number of users with out-of-date anti-viral protection suggests users are resisting. ... As another incentive to subscribe, and one that might leave a bad taste in the mouth, the company says that subscribers will be given unspecified "updates" to add new features and capabilities over the life of their subscription. Perpetual licensees will only get bug fixes and security updates.'"

Comments

Guess I am learning Libre Office

[jhoegl]

I am not paying a leasing fee for software, thanks.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Humorous. If you have to learn libre office you clearly haven't used a word processor before. Microsoft Office is not significantly different (at least older versions) than Libre Office. Unless you've only picked up word processing since 2007 or so and it was with MS Office then you've already got the skill set to use Libre Office. There are just a few slight differences for basic word processing tasks.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[Baldrake]

And fortunately you need go no further than TFM to find out that you don't have to. Subscription is just an option. You can still buy outright if you want.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[jhoegl]

I am actually talking about scripting and macroing in Libre.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[jhoegl]

It could be complex formulas, or a form in Excel/Calc(Libre Ver)
It could also be an error checking, a sorting feature, um... what else
It could be maybe mass email lists, or some other functions like that.
Macros are pretty useful in Excel if you know what you are doing. I have seen some cool stuff.
Word... not so much.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[Tough Love]

Libreoffice spreadsheet macros are nearly identical to Excel now. Not to the point where you could expect some gigantic Excel model to just work, but I doubt you get that even between different versions of Microsoft's product. Writing macros from scratch... it just works. All the same functions are there with the exception of a few really bizarre ones. And Openoffice/Libreoffice has a much nicer implementation of cut and paste than Excel, it works more like cut and paste in a word processor as opposed to the wierdo funky scheme they came up with for Excel. That a big deal for me, I don't want to be thinking about cut and paste oddities when I'm thinking about crunching numbers.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[v1]

You're already leasing it. It's called licensing. The only difference is that you had a one-time payment before, and now they want you to pay continuously.

They say they're going to add new features, but I don't see how they can add $100 worth of new features every year. Heck, office 2004 still gets my jobs done. I don't see what features they could possibly have added over the last 8 years that would be worth $800.

The whole pricing thing for apps like this I think is going to do a bubble burst shortly anyway. Who's going to pay $100/yr to lease an app that a cloud app will do for you for $15/yr? I've used Google Docs recently, and while it's not a perfect replacement yet, it's sure a lot cheaper!

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[LordLimecat]

Several years down the road LibreOffice will probably remain an option. Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[chipschap]

And I'm willing to do that (rather than pay an accountant a lot more) because I expect them (e.g. TurboTax) to keep up with changes in tax law and reflect those in the software. If they do that well (and so far I'm satisfied) then it's worth a reasonable annual fee.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[drsmithy]

It's an option now. Several years down the road, who knows?

Several years down the road, I'd still have the copy of Office bought today.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[symbolset]

With it being incompatible with Metro, and an OS that's going out of support, and nothing but Metro based OS's available. Inch by inch that install CD becomes a coffee coaster.

Re:Guess I am learning Libre Office

[Will.Woodhull]

No.

I run LibreOffice under Ubuntu, and with the automatic updating I get a steady stream of vulnerability fixes, bug corrections, enhancements, and additional features. There is probably an average of one such update per week, and all I need to do is press a button to authorize it. This setup is much slicker than the Windows equivalents, at no cost and no hassle.

Not only that, but my copy of LO has functioned without problems when I did a major upgrade from Ubuntu v10.4 to v12.4, and when I changed the GUI front end between Unity, 2 different versions of Gnome, and KDE. (I have settled on Gnome 3 in its "Classic" form for now, as it is most familiar and I am more efficient with it than the others, but with the recent Nvidea / KDE graphics improvements, I might start using the KDE option more frequently at least while I am doing CG work).

Oh yeah, I forgot. Windows restricts you to using only one GUI, the one that Redmond thinks is best for sales at the moment. So ignore that last bit. If you do not use a Linux OS, you do not need to know anything about those options.

Good news for Libre Office!

[Beardo the Bearded]

Well then, I'll just leave this here:
Download Libre Office. $0, $0 a month. I think you can swing it.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[countach74]

Here's the thing: LibreOffice is by far best when you use its native formats. Weird, huh?

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the real world, we conduct our business in Office formats. Having LibreOffice do a halfass job of reading them is unacceptable.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice is good when you're doing simple text and pictures on a background.

Now try using it when you have animations, color changing, custom fonts, interactive features, and other things in your PPT files. It will make your presentation unusable.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Here's the thing: LibreOffice is by far best when you use its native formats. Weird, huh?

Here's the thing: Normal people who want documents from you don't use LibreOffice's native formats. Weird, huh?

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

Having animations, color changing, custom fonts, interactive features, and other things will make your presentation unusable. What you write it in doesn't matter at that point.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[gmanterry]

Let me know when Libre Office doesn't horribly mangle my PPTX files.

I believe that any MS file format that contains an 'X' in the extension is experimental and that is most likely why Libre Office has a problem. Use another file format and you probably won't have any problems.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

In real work we use Libre Office to convert old WordPerfect and Microsoft Office files to a newer version. It handles old Microsoft Office files better than the recent versions of Microsoft Office.

( I work as digital archivist / documentalist )

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[smpoole7]

> In the real world

... with a bad economy, with money tight, most businesses are looking for a way to trim a buck. Just because your particular firm isn't willing to spend the (minimal, in most cases) effort on a migration that will literally save your company tons of money, don't think that all of us think that way. We certainly don't.

Look: that argument was compelling up until just a few years ago. I'll grant you that, especially back in the old StarOffice days (gack, gag), then on to OpenOffice.org. But speaking for myself -- freely admitting that your mileage will vary -- I haven't had trouble opening anything in LibreOffice for a couple of years now. Including some fairly sweet PPT presentations.

Besides, Microsoft has tried to introduce the "subscription" model before. They'll probably back off of it after they get deluged with complaints. Again.

(Or -- this is my real fear -- they'll go after things like Libre and KOffice with the patent hammer.)

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[93 Escort Wagon]

That, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much a textbook example of sour grapes.

Slashdotter #1: "My software can do everything your software can do."
Slashdotter #2: "Your software can't do x."
Slashdotter #1: "Yeah, but... but... doing x is stupid anyway, and only for losers!"

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[LordLimecat]

... with a bad economy, with money tight, most businesses are looking for a way to trim a buck. Just because your particular firm isn't willing to spend the (minimal, in most cases) effort on a migration that will literally save your company tons of money, don't think that all of us think that way. We certainly don't.

The last few times I tried that, apparently the users got sufficiently pissed with OpenOffice's oddities that they just went out and purchased Office 2007 anyways. Being a technical guy, I can put up with a fair bit of grief before I loose my cool at my computer; apparently your average accounting / legal employee tends to be much less tolerant of that kind of change.

So the best of luck to you, but dont be surprised when those savings turn out not to be worth it to the CEO.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[symbolset]

Yeah, the huge advantage Microsoft Office has is that it is completely incompatible with everything else. And who doesn't want that feature in a technology product?

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[humanrev]

PowerPoint is only one example though. I think the issue is that this "sour grapes" issue is rampant in the Linux/open source world. Heck, I fully understand why certain functionality might be missing in a FOSS program compared to its proprietary equivalent (it might simply be difficult to implement, lack of resources/time, etc), but I can also completely understand why someone might prefer to just throw money at a solution that DOES provide the functionality they want.

Most people are more interested in results and will deal with a bit of financial pain if the free alternatives are too stressful to use for whatever reason. It's better to accept this as an inherent limitation with the nature of open source rather than suggest that the user is at fault. Otherwise you're just setting up a case of the user never bothering with open source again if it's failed them too many times.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Culture20]

Would be nice if you cockfuckers would learn to pull your head out of your ass and read the fdman title. Let me help : "MS Office 2013 Pushing HOME USERS Toward Subscriptions 110". That's not bujsiness u8 sutpdi ignrosnt anoanmosu tylotlerle shti. Burn inhell. Dmajn fuckignndiptioc pierfed sof mchsit. Why are theere so many stupdi people in this world that cna;t even REAd a fucikjigntitled? Being stupdi ashoudl quzluitfy people for sterilziation, so they can't mspreaed their suptid gejhnes ot other peopel. D,an fuckignidiktopci opeice so shfit shirt.\

FTI: somepeople inbteract wuith businedsdses from hone. Espexiakkly withresumes. Senfing an Open/LibreOffice Dog to an HR drone using MS Office csnresult infickinh loojin likethus.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[afgam28]

My old company used to have Office 2003 installed site-wide (until as recently as the start of this year). Occasionally we'd get documents from people who used Office 2007, which uses the new XML-based file formats and ironically, only those of us who used Ubuntu/LibreOffice could open these documents.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Bremic]

LibreOffice does a better job at pretty much everything, if you use it's native formats and then export to office at the end.

I am sick of being at work, having someone with MS Office 2007 create a file, send it to someone who is still using MS Office 2003, getting back a document with the formatting destroyed, fixing it, then sending it to the final user who is using the same version of Office, but set to use different defaults and then getting complaints that the document is broken.

Since moving to Open/Libre Office, this level of problem has nearly vanished, and when you want to send a final document, you send a pdf and offer to provide the original in any format the end user wants. Time spent fixing conversion problems drops significantly.

The only time I load MS Office now is to open a file that is so horribly embedded with MS Office specific stuff it is almost unreadable even in MS Office, and then exporting it to a simpler version an MS Office document so it will load in software that isn't incompatible with itself.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[Will.Woodhull]

LO does a fine job producing .pdf files, and a reasonably good job producing HTML. Those are the only two formats any business should be using in any final draft of any communication, internal or external.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[humanrev]

I think the classic example is OCR, where FOSS options are severely limited (I'd love to be proved wrong, but it sure seems that way).

Funny you mention OCR - I actually investigated that yesterday to see what FOSS options were available. Turns out that Tesseract (http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/) is pretty damn awesome. It's command line only, but I've found you can use gImageReader (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimagereader/) as a frontend. Tesseract itself provides surprisingly good recognition of English at least, while gImageReader allows you to load up multi-page PDFs for analysis, as well as being able to select a rectangular region of a PDF or image and just OCR that area. You can then spellcheck the results before saving to a .txt. file.

As nice as this is though, Adobe Acrobat is fucking amazing. Got it installed at work, so I tried a scanned PDF and after it performed its analysis it could turn those printed graphical words into highlightable regions of text, including making them searchable. It's a brilliant feature but it would have been hell to develop, so I can understand why someone might prefer if you needed this feature. But for pulling plain text out of a bitmap, Tesseract is your best option.

Re:Good news for Libre Office!

[FireFury03]

PowerPoint is only one example though. I think the issue is that this "sour grapes" issue is rampant in the Linux/open source world.

Its rampant in *any* situation where someone is having to switch from the system they are used to to a system they aren't. Whether that be from Windows to Linux, Windows to OS X, OS X to Linux, OS X to Windows, Linux to Windows, Linux to OS X, Android to iOS, iOS to Android, whatever. No two systems have complete feature parity so there's *always* something you use (however rarely) on the old one that you can't use on the new one, and the response from the existing users of the system you're switching to is always "you don't need to do that".

Heck, I fully understand why certain functionality might be missing in a FOSS program compared to its proprietary equivalent (it might simply be difficult to implement, lack of resources/time, etc), but I can also completely understand why someone might prefer to just throw money at a solution that DOES provide the functionality they want.

I can understand why people might want to thrown money at something in some situations. However, much of the time, you don't actually _need_ the feature you're complaining about, and if you overcame your annoyance for a while you might find that the new system does other stuff better than the old system, to the point that you are happy sacrificing one feature to gain better support for stuff you didn't even know you wanted.

At the end of the day, *I* don't care what solution people go for so long as they don't force me into the same decision (this is where open file formats are important). However, I do think that the vast vast majority of home users would be happy with the likes of Libra Office over the paid software if they only gave it a go.

What *does* wind me up is when managers dictate that the company will use some expensive bit of software (which the managers themselves aren't going to use) without first trying out the free stuff to see if that is going to do the job. The big one I've had experience of here is companies inisiting on using commercial version control software - in my experience, *all* the commercial version control software is absolutely apalling compared to the free stuff (hell, even CVS beats ClearCase, and you wouldn't catch me using CVS these days because there are far better (free) replacements).

Most people are more interested in results and will deal with a bit of financial pain if the free alternatives are too stressful to use for whatever reason.

This works on a personal level, but less so on a corporate level where the software choice is being dictated from on high rather than by the people actually using it. Yes, changing to a whole new UI is hard, but you get that every few versions of MS Office anyway, so the next time MS change the UI it should be no more painful to switch away from MS Office entirely (for the most part - there *are* features in MS Office that work better than LO, but I still maintain that the vast majority of people don't use them).

It's better to accept this as an inherent limitation with the nature of open source rather than suggest that the user is at fault. Otherwise you're just setting up a case of the user never bothering with open source again if it's failed them too many times.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, the same goes both ways. For example, I have been using Linux pretty much exclusively (both home and work) for over 10 years. The last version of Windows I used for anything really serious was Windows 98. On the odd occasion I use Windows, I do find it really hard because it doesn't do a load of stuff I'm used to; and when I explain this to Windows users, I don't get any kind of sympathetic "oh well if you used Windows exclusively you'd get used to it" (which is probably true), but instead its usually a case of "why on earth would you want to do that, that's a really

Perfect family gift

[Dan East]

Dad: Merry Christmas kids!!!!
Kids: What did you get us?
Dad: We now have a 1 year family subscription for a web-based word processor!
Kids: YAAAAAAAY!!!!!!

Libre Office

[Sir_Kurt]

OK, so why wouldn't any home user choose a free LibreOffice download over a $100/year msoffice subscription tax?

Kurt

Re:Libre Office

[dnaumov]

Because users actually prefer MS Office and are willing to pay for using it?

Re:Libre Office

[drooling-dog]

Because it's not advertised on the Tee Vee, and because MS can afford all of the FUD and astroturfing it needs to keep people in a state of confusion. After all, it's "not ready for the desktop", just like Linux.

Re:Libre Office

[Mitreya]

Because it's not advertised on the Tee Vee, and because MS can afford all of the FUD and astroturfing it needs to keep people in a state of confusion.

Also, because you may or may not be able to open that PowerPoint.pptx with cute cat pictures. I know compatibility exists, but it is in no way guaranteed to always work

After all, it's "not ready for the desktop", just like Linux.

And here I will have to burn some of my carma once again
With all due respect, Linux is not nearly as ready for the desktop as people on slashdot seem to think. Now, I understand that there is a bunch of people who will come forward and explain how their grandma used Ubuntu (or such) for 10 years now.

But what I know is when the wireless card on the desktop did not work, the common googled solution appears to involve recompiling the kernel with right modules. That's where I begin to tune out. It's not the specific problem, it's the fact that kernel re-compilation should never be an acceptable part of the configuration/setup that is done by the average user.

Re:Libre Office

[chipschap]

Except I have trouble seeing how home users are locked into an expensive office product. At work, sure, in a lot of places you simply have no choice. But at home? Where's the compatibility requirement for complex documents?

Re:Libre Office

[Shompol]

and their grandma can use it" ... (as long as someone carefully administers that box for them) is rarely mentioned.

Windows boxes also need to be administered. Their administration also involves routine cleanup of "toolbars" and trojans and other crap that either installs itself, or with some help from a clueless user, and then the whole thing comes to a grinding halt once every two years due to malware, FAT shortcomings, or getting completely hijacked by some Trojan that blatantly demands a payment "to protect your computer". Thus, Linux administration is cheap and hassle-free compared to Windows, and your point is moot and void. There is a currently a shortage of neighbourhood kids who can help with Linux, but that is not what you were talking about, you meant that Windows does not require administration at all, didn't you?

Re:Libre Office

[humanrev]

Users don't necessarily prefer MS Office as much as they are locked into it.

I know people who, when having a look at screenshots of both Office 2010 and LibreOffice 3.5, decide that they prefer Office 2012 because, in their words, "it's prettier". If this is all it takes then I'm not surprised at all when people say they prefer MS Office.

Beside, even if we argue that they only "prefer" it because they're locked into using it, isn't that still a preference? My wife is a teacher. She could use LibreOffice if necessary but I threw Office 2010 on her machine for the following reasons:

(1) She, like everyone who's been at a school, knows how to use Office and hence is very familiar with where everything is.
(2) She, like everyone in working life, is surrounded by a Microsoft ecosystem and as such it's just plain less work to stick with using what everyone else is using. You suffer less stress because of it (no issues with file format compatibilities for a start)
(3) If LibreOffice causes problems when trying to deal with documents used by other staff members as well as those sent to/from students, SHE WILL BLAME ME and for good reason, since Office was working perfectly for her anyway.

So yes, there's a legitimate reason why people would prefer using MS Office to anything else. I can get away with LibreOffice but only because I don't require the same level of format comparability that she does.

This is just how the world works.

Re:Libre Office

[TapeCutter]

The label "home user" does not by itself tell you if compatibility is a concern. The compatibility requirement depends on what "home users" actually use an office suite at home to do. I would hazard a guess that the main uses for a "home user" are aimed at communicating with a business, government, NGO's, etc. If that's not what a particular home user is doing then a lack of MSO compatibility is not preventing them from using whatever tools they like to accomplish the task.

I know it's hard for us geeks to understand but most people use their computers as a tool to perform tasks, they will use the best tool from their own POV as to what is "best". In other words they really don't give a flying fuck who makes the hammer as long as it drives the nails home, if they have to rent the "best" hammer for a $100, so be it.

Who the Hell is steering this ship?

[hilldog]

First an interface that no body likes ...say hello to blocky windows 8 than a screw you charge for Office. Bill come back! The captain is steering into the reefs! Awww...screw it just go open source, spend half an hour learning the in's and out's and be free!

no thanks...

[jaymz666]

Word 2003 still works just fine...

Most home users barely use many of the features of these tools to begin with, they won't see the value of paying $100 a year for this. That's a lot of money to many people.

Re:no thanks...

[jaymz666]

To open Microsoft Office Word 2007 .docx or .docm files with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Word 2002, or Word 2000, you need to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats and any necessary Office updates. By using the Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system, you can open, edit some items, and save Office Word 2007 documents in previous versions of Word.

Re:Support for Access databases on Linux.

[PRMan]

Open Office Base is an alternative to Access. I even used it at work to open an Access 2007 file (we didn't have Access with our version of Office) and it opened it well enough for me to read it into a spreadsheet.

Two words

[Dyinobal]

Google Drive.

Seriously if you've not checked out googles iteration of google docs (and their attempt to compete in 'the cloud') you should. 5 gigs free space on the cloud, plus built in web based office suite, all free.

Though from what I understand it costs more than the old google docs subscription models did. If you decide 5 gigs of space isn't enough for you. But it would seem they have added value to it with the rather convenient google drive program

Wow, for only $100/yr I can get free UPDATES?

[Jenny Z]

It is kind of funny how the marketing departments of big software companies think we actually look forward to 'updates' which annoy us and waste our time. Now I actually breath a sigh of relief when my BlueRay player gets past the moment where it may insist I have to spend 5 minutes 'updating' before I can watch my movie. I can't imagine wanting to pay $100 in return for being hassled with updates I don't care about. Apparently, they haven't figured out that people very well might pay $100 to never be bothered with them.

Poor value?

[DigitAl56K]

I doesn't seem very good value to me.

I just bought a home license for office from Costco for ~$120 with instant $20 rebate. It allows up to three licensed installations and it doesn't expire. Like many people, I don't upgrade instantly each time a new version of Office rolls around, so you can easily amortize that cost over say.. 3-4 years. So for my 3 licenses (only two of which I'm even using), I paid about $33/yr, or $16.50 per active license/yr and don't have to worry that the software will expire.

If I bought this subscription, I would be paying $100 every year, getting more licenses - even though I can't use more, so I'd be paying about $50 per active license per year - and I better keep paying it if I want to keep editing my files.

Value seems poor, even if I used more licenses, and even if I hadn't got the $20 rebate. Seems at first glance like a 2.5x markup in my case, in fact.

"Convenience"

[Redmancometh]

I'm tired of companies calling things convenient that aren't convenient, and using it as an excuse to screw us. Or "Simplifying" things and making things both more expensive, and harder to customize. I think for the first time the IT industry isn't getting better in any way shape or form it's getting worse!

Two words:

[OldSport]

Fuck that.

I will use my current version of Office until it is absolutely and completely obsolete, and I will switch to something else before I buy into this "pay indefinitely for something" BS. Try increasing sales the old-fashioned way, by actually offering new and innovative products, instead of using this rent-a-program crap to leech off your customers.

This just in...

[roc97007]

Office 2000 still works. It'll even open docx files with this.

I'm happy to use the more recent versions of Office, but it has to be on someone else's dime. (Like, my place of employment.) I bought 2000, it works, and they're gonna havta pry it from my cold dead hands (at least until I switch to something open source).

Why would a home user waste valuable income on a new version of Office? Are ribbons all that important for that letter to Aunt Edna?

Bright Business Future

[islisis]

Expect to be followed up with a "Free to Type" and "Pay to Save" model shortly.

so...

[Charliemopps]

Sadly I think this will actually work out for microsoft. This is the same sort of thing happened with MMOs. The thing is, you do something like this and drive away 2/3rds of your customers... so what if the remaining 1/3 is paying 10x the price for the same product. And what's going to happen here is people will get windows for "free" with their computer. They'll put all their files and such on it and then after 6 months or so... bam... can't access any of their important documents and the only way to get them back is pay microsoft $100.

mangling pptx for home use

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are doing PPTX at home for work, shouldn't work provide you with a copy of MS Office? Maybe I'm being silly, but I don't do powerpoint at home to impress my friends and family.

Google Docs

[Teckla]

Predictably, there are already lots of mentions of Libre Office.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that Google Docs (free) meets my meager needs. You can even download copies of your documents, in several different formats, to store locally.

Highly recommended unless you have advanced needs.

Thank you Microsoft!

[FlynnMP3]

Dear Microsoft,

Thank you for the generous time and money donation to "The Documentation Foundation"; home of LibreOffice. The extra incentive of more users having more time to devote to providing feedback to make LibreOffice better and more focused is certainly appreciated. However, in the future, perhaps consider a straight up money donation as this will be better for your business. After all, more competition is better for the consumer and if it weren't for the consumer, neither of us would be here.

For the future developers coming into the fold, there are plenty of User Interface improvements that are perfect for getting your feet wet with the project. We welcome you aboard!

Best Wishes,

LibreOffice Development Team

Real People Needs

[rueger]

I'm always amused by the debates about whether LibreOffice can replace MS Office for the average user. Inevitably there are crys of "LO breaks the formatting and animation and fontly goodness that I put into my documents!"

Here's a newsflash.

• 90% of home users don't do anything more fancy than put in one picture into a newsletter, and basically use three or four fonts, one of which is Comic Sans.
• 95% of home users never touch Excel or Powerpoint unless they're opening something created elsewhere.
• 99% of home users don't use Access, or anything like it.
• 75% of home users don't share docs with anyone. More likely they just print them out.

Actually, most home users spend more time putting words and pictures into Facebook than they do into any office suite.

My point being that for probably 75% of the public LibreOffice or GoogleDocs are absolutely just fine.

And if LO breaks your dumb Word doc, maybe it's because you've filled it with unnecessary junk that actually detracts from what you're doing.

Re:Support for Access databases on Linux.

[pwizard2]

Libreoffice can open the *.docx format just fine;

Unfortunately, editing a *.docx in LibreOffice and saving it tends to fuck it up. I speak from experience.

Re:Turning the screws

[epyT-R]

Microsoft isn't the only one who thinks you shouldn't own your electronics.. In computing, the age of empowerment is coming to a close. Next up, the age of enslavement.

Re:Technet Subscription

[Gothmolly]

You're always better off with Technet - then you get ALL the s/w for the same price.

Re:2010 version

[TaoPhoenix]

I do have to say that the 2010 version of office has an unheralded devastatingly good feature called Custom Ribbons. It's even better than the old menus because you pick any feature you want and line it up in your own little toolbar in the order you use stuff. So for example you dump Bold, Center, Left, Font, Size, Cut Copy Paste, Print Preview, Save-As, and Print all in a neat little row. Bang, make a document, click your buttons mostly left to right, out comes your work. Before you dismiss this, the secret is that even the menus only used X functions. The Custom Toolbar has a hard to find set of buttons that eventually let you pick *any of the thousand features* in the entire program!

So I am starting to think THAT is a new game-changer feature that some edition of Libre Office needs to notice and put through.