Slashdot Mirror
Office 2013: Microsoft Cloud Era Begins In Earnest
snydeq writes "Microsoft's release of Office 2013 represents the latest in a series of makeover moves, this time aimed at shifting use of its bedrock productivity suite to the cloud. Early hands-on testing suggests Office 2013 is the 'best Office yet,' bringing excellent cloud features and pay-as-you-go pricing to Office. But Microsoft's new vision for remaining nimble in the cloud era comes with some questions, such as what happens when your subscription expires, not to mention some gray areas around inevitable employee use of Office 2013 Home Premium in business settings."
Zordak points to coverage of the new Office model at CNN Money, and says "More interesting than the article itself is the comments. The article closes by asking 'Will you [pay up]?' The consensus in the comments is a resounding 'NO,' with frequent mentions of the suitability of OpenOffice for home productivity." Also at SlashCloud.
The mainstream media dub every Microsoft product 'the best yet!', even when it sucks.
Where I work, there is no way the IT and security people would ever allow an externally-hosted office product. There's just too much security and paranoia about intellectual property, and worse, because we're involved with critical infrastructure.
What are companies like this supposed to do? I suppose we could get a way to host it ourselves, but many of our workstation are on isolated lab networks and have no Internet access at all.
I think it might be easier just to find another Office suite vendor, given how complicated this will make things.
Pass.
Microsoft would be best served by making it free or nearly free for home use and subscription for business use. It is the same model they use for AV, and it works fairly well. Enterprise businesses need Enterprise level support and tools, they will pay because they have no choice.
Sure, you will probably lose some small businesses, but they were not going to upgrade anyway.
This way Office stays the defacto productivity suite, new users (kids) use it at home by default, and businesses have to either retrain every user on a new suite, or pay for office (hint, most will pay for office, no one likes being retrained).
Even if I felt the need for a new version of Office, i will be avoiding cloud apps just as I did in the 90s when they where first tried. Frankly, there is big enough problem with applications (games for the most part) requiring an internet connect already without putting the whole thing out there. Even if we ignore the security issues, I dont want to have to be online inorder to work on a document.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Still leaps and bounds better than most everything else out there. Haven't had time to do everything in it but it's just so much easier to work with than OpenOffice or LibreOffice. Glad I get a discount through work though, cause I don't think I would pony up $100+
I realize needs differ, but Microsoft Works did everything I needed to do years ago. Thus far, the only reason to buy new versions of Office is being forced into compatibility with the suckers who bought the new version.
What in the world do I get out of MS office, in or out of the cloud that I don't get in a basic office package of word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing. Admittedly, the graphics package could be more user-friendly, but there are FOSS substitutes for that too. The bottom line is the bottom line. Money for MS Office or no money for OpenOffice.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
For home use, LIBREoffice is more than good enough
FTFY
My, what sharp teeth you have!
Heck why not just meter it. You can pay per document saved or minutes of use. That way if I can have all my legacy documents stored and available on any computer and I just pay when I open them up to edit them. No seats just copies attached to credit cards accounts. No one time big payment.
then when you get sent an MS word document you can edit it (for a price). Viewing could be free.
This way you would not need an internet connection to pay (though that could be one way). Instead a security conscious company could buy a hundred thousand thousand one-time codes that you would enter every time you wanted to save a document. You dole these out internally. Sure people could cheat but they can do that now with cracked licensees if they really want to. Significant Bussinesses won't cheat.
The whole concept here is like a terminator crop from monsanto where you do all the work raising the seed but it won't grow unless you pay Monsanto for the magic chemical it has been engineered to need. In this case you do the install and maintenance on your computer everything is local and under your control but you pay for a code when you want to save a new document.
What matters then is the cost. Suppose the cost to buy it was $300, the cost to subscibe was $150 and the cost to meter it was 50 cents per document save. Which would appeal to you?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Only one person at a time may use the software on each licensed computer or licensed device. The service/software may not be used for commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating activities."
So if your kids want to use Word to make a Lemonade Stand sign so they can sell Lemonade for .05 a cup on the front lawn? Ilegal!
Even worse your kids want to help out with Hurricane Sandy relief by making signs and posting them around the neighborhood telling people how they can help their local non-profit? Illegal!
Or I guess you can't even print up an Ad that you plan on hanging in the local supermarket saying you have a couch for sale?
Btw you wanna bet MS themselves hosts templates designed specifically for these activities?
It's time we hold these companies accountable for the crap they shove in the TOS. What Microsoft is doing is BS and they need to be called on it. Feel free to email Microsoft and tell them that you wanted to buy Office 2013 but because their TOS make both you and your children criminals, you went with Openoffice etc instead.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
1) How long will I have access to my documents? According to current documentation for enterprises and small business:
When a subscription is removed, all data is permanently lost.
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/En-ca/office365-enterprises/hh143495.aspx
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-ca/office365-smallbusinesses/hh143522.aspx
2) Subscribers get an additional 20GB in Skydrive. What happens to my documents if I am using 100% of Skydrive (including the additional 20GB)? Is there a grace period?
They don't make it easy to find the information to these questions. The answers are likely the same for any other cloud service that provides a free and paid offering but why do we have to guess.
With the progress LibreOffice has made, the only people who use Office are to please those who are extremely picky or actually NEED the features. The only people who would pay are those who need it or don't know better.
It costs more than Netflix. I know which my family would rather live without...
Subscription software has no interest for me, and neither does storing stuff in the cloud.
If you can't sell me stand-alone software that works and doesn't require on-going fees and access to your servers ... well, I'll just use someone else's software.
I can't imagine most organizations wanting their Office docs in the cloud.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...will always be the user's internet connection -- not just in terms of being connected, but likely also having sufficient bandwidth. I can appreciate the usefulness of "cloud computing" -- which is really just an extension of dumb terminals and network storage packaged in this new buzzphrase. However, it really only makes sense in environments in which they have control over the network availability as well. Even Google Docs, with no price tag, is only as nice as my network connection.
What this does for MS Office is that it now has a new form of DRM -- in the sense that you can only run office if you connect to Microsoft -- and they don' t have to advertise it as being DRM.
Many production networks never see the cloud, or a least no connection to the Microsoft cloud.
As far as I'm concerned, they are exactly the same thing, except are split by rigid computer-geek philosophical divides by idiots who would rather do things the hard way out of principle than work together for the good of everyone.
Thought experiment - self destruction of the office suite... What would happen? My guess is a dramatic increase in productivity.
1) Can't waste time on powerpoints
2) Can't use Excel as the corporate database management system
3) Can't use Word as the corporate database management system. Wordpad is good enough for the average user. In fact even wordpad has too many features for the average goofball.
4) Can't produce meaningless made up metrics using excel
5) Nobody uses outlook unless they have to, so I'd expect a dramatic surge in gmail popularity. Maybe g+/FB/twitter make some inroads into business communication. Linkedin should be paying attention at the change to intermediate themselves as a business social network.
I'm seeing a distinct possibility of a dramatic upsurge in business productivity... either that ore more time spent in meetings and at the water cooler gossip. either way the world would be a better place without office suites.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If I wanted to rent software, I'd rent software. Micro$oft already has plenty of money, yet they want to suck more of it out of our pockets. No thanks, I'll just keep using old versions of Office I already have, and if it comes down to it I'll use FOSS instead. I'm a human being, damnit, not a revenue stream!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Now that I think about it more, it seems like a penny per document-save would come out about right. I probably save a working document 50 times before its final. and I produce hundreds of documents per year. So that would work out to be a bit more than the ownership price.
Would you buy MS word if it was a penny per document-save?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It also does everything you need...as long as you don't share your resources with other other. In other words, never connecting it to the internet.
Likewise, OO is great as long as you print the docs out. The moment you try sharing doc files with other people, everything breaks. I always had issues saving/ exporting/ opening "real" .docx files. Finally, I just gave up and went back to M$.
If formatting, layout, or graphics didn't matter, I'd just use notepad.
I don't mean to bash OO....only wish more people used it. From academics, businesses, and govt.
Profits > Law
I hated the new interface that came with 2007 (Fluent User Interface) and 2010 was no improvement. I did not have a choice, though, because that is what they install on our work machines. And I just have to deal with it. With cloud services, when the provider updates the software in a way that disrupts productivity, who is held accountable? When Windows Vista came out, people had the option to not upgrade. But when everything is on the cloud, you don't have the choice to not upgrade anymore. What if you don't care for the changes in the newer version? Or worse that the new features break the existing workflow? Suddenly companies are now going to have to leave aside money for re-training programs in the even that the cloud service providers make drastic changes.
My response to Office being Cloud-based is this: JUST SAY NO.
As has been mentioned above my comment, there are multiple problems with this one being HIPAA laws for who can see patient documents. I would also be greatly concerned about corporate espionage - if the corporation was dumb enough to use Cloud Office in the first place. What better way to siphon off sensitive data from other corporations than to host all their files in your cloud?
My strongest reason is even simpler than all of those - my data is my data is my data. It should reside on my home network, not in the cloud. It should be where I can get to it when I need it, without having to worry about if I paid my Office fee for access this month. It should be where I can manipulate it if need be, so that I can read it in a different program than the one it was created in. And it should for ever and all time be MINE. Not Microsoft's. Not Google's. Not Apple's. While the great majority of us who are technically inclined understand planned obsolescence and the inanity of depending on someone else to keep our saved files all nice and neat and accessible, the _public_ at large does not. We should be educating them on "the 3v1Ls" of such and the long list of companies that suddenly vanished after taking a lot of people's money, regardless of it was the corporation's fault they closed or some government's.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Just a small heads up, breaking the TOS is not illegal. The only thing that could happen is a possible civil suit.
It's important to remember that there are 2 ways of buying Office 2013 (at least for home use): Office 2013 and Office 365. MS has a nice simple comparison here. The $99/year gets you 5 computers while the other SKUs only let you install on 1 computer.
One important change for the stand-alone SKUs is the # of computers you can install on. In Office 2010, there were SKUs that let you install on 3 PCs for "Home & Student" edition or 2 PCs for "Home and Business" edition. While Office 2013 is 1PC for all editions of the stand-alone. I'm guessing this is MS trying to push Office 365 (the subscription).
If I was installing on 5 PCs, the subscription may be worth it, but I'm not sure I like the idea of my software license expiring and possibly losing data.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Aren't you forgetting GNU somewhere there? :)
none
Where did you get that? It says one person at a time. Are you using Word on the same computer at the same time as your kids? Pretty sure this means you can't do something like remote desktop a bunch of computers to your one machine with Office on it and have a bunch of people use it at once.
And if Microsoft offers you Office for an annual rate that is the same or less than a typical AV product AND that includes "easy, no hassle updates" that make upgrading as painless as upgrading to the next version of Firefox, 95% of home users won't care. If Microsoft is smart, they'll make billing so easy, so simple, so customer-oriented that installing it on a 2nd PC is just treated as a new silent license, charged at 25-50% the cost of the first one and that's it. Apple's system of authorizing computers in iTunes is a simplistic version of what they could do. They could easily make the admin feature enabled with features like a one-click deactivation of a computer so the key could be repurposed.
What Microsoft should be doing is incremental, yearly updates to Windows priced at the rates Be charged for BeOS. $50/upgrade $100/new install. If they made the OS better and faster like Be did, most users would be like "fuck yeah I'm upgrading!" to the detriment of hardware vendors.
You can still get a standalone non-cloud version of office 2013 too...
Because Ballmer is an idiot.
I know this is slashdot, but try reading the second sentence, hun.
Yep. Even though MS probably won't harass anyone but larger companies over this, it's still stupid.
Just like how MS (can) delete your personal nude pictures from SkyDrive, even if you're not sharing them with anyone.
How about keeping things simple? It's been shown over and over again that this is what consumers want, especially with new technology, which is kinda complicated enough on its own.
[klerck.o8g]? to you by Penisbird Slashdot's
Tell that to Carmen Ortiz...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The one person at a time thing is to prevent you from running it as a terminal server app.
The service/software statement is to prevent you from selling that as a SaaS service, or integrating their software into your product and then selling it.
Now, go back to your basement before I edit your runlevel.
Just a small heads up, breaking the TOS is not illegal. The only thing that could happen is a possible civil suit.
Also, Aaron Swartz is working hard on RSS 3.0, your check is in the mail, and I would never cum in your mouth, baby!
No way you'd get me to use this service. At my last job, the company used Office 365 Live. It completely sucked. It is slow, especially if there is any latency or ISP trouble. Second, when they setup my Outlook account, it took 6 weeks for MS to get it to work right (something about how the account was created in the wrong context or something)
"The hard way" here is to write software instead of buying it from Microsoft. If it weren't for geeks doing things the hard way, there wouldn't be an OpenOffice or a LibreOffice for trolls like you to use.
I remember the whole PlaysForSure fiasco, where at first, PlaysForSure was a new DRM that was incompatible with a good chunk of the players out at the time. Then, PlaysForSure servers got shut off, stranding people who bought their music legitimately.
For music, at least I can re-get the music someplace else. But for docs, these are my files, I can't go to documentbay.se and get my files from there.
I think a lot of people will be careful with this.
except are split by rigid computer-geek philosophical divides
Except that a lot of those rigid philosophical geeks are the former developers of OpenOffice, and the ones who forked it to LibreOffice. Granted, now that OO is under Apache's stewardship (as opposed to Oracle) it might be nice if they pooled resources. Not sure if they already do this or not.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
One thing that is not getting nearly the press it deserves, is that Microsoft changed the licensing on the desktop versions of Office. Unless previous versions, Office is no longer transferrable. So if you ever upgrade your computer, you have to buy a new copy of Office otherwise you are out of compliance.
I was actually really looking forward to trying Office 2013, but that one change alone makes it a dealbreaker.
http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1784
Whoops.
$100 a year is way too much for the average home user. I bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 for around $70 at the student pricing when I was in college. I have been using the same copy since. So far the price per year has been $70 / 6 years = $11.67/year. That assumes I will buy a new copy sometime this year which I most likely will not. $5 to $10 a year would be more reasonable. Since graduating, my average usage of Microsoft Office at home is probably under 10 hours per year.
... and how does he feel about a Cloud Era beginning in him? Also, any word from his friend Frank?
Dark Reflection
The article closes by asking 'Will you [pay up]?' The consensus in the comments is a resounding 'NO,' with frequent mentions of the suitability of OpenOffice for home productivity.
Perfectly predictable ---
and as utterly meaningless as the responses to any self-selecting online poll.
Now and again Ars Technica enjoys puncturing the geek's wish-fulfillment and over-inflated ego with a headline like this: Microsoft fails to notice the death of the PC, posts record revenue figures instead.
"The Windows Division once more becomes the company's biggest money-maker."
IANAL, but AFAIK... They can't copyright/own work that you produce -- if it's original and just using their device as an instrument. The same goes for generated work as well. If you could, I would make a musical instrument and stick that TOS on there. Then become a millionaire from ignorant artists.
The G
Warning: this hammer may not be used to build a house if you intend to sell it.
Of course it's micro and it's soft, so you won't be able to build anything using that hammer.
If Microsoft can determine that you've got nude pictures in your SkyDrive, then you must be sharing them with someone - even if it's only Microsoft.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Microsoft has wanted subscription software service (pay by the month) for a very long time. The idea of buy once and use forever is an anathema to them. Problem: software doesn't wear out. Its design target may shift (people want something else or something new for the sake of new), but if your requirements don't change, then the physical software doesn't wear out. 75 year old COBOL programs whose requirements haven't changed, are still running (on modern hardware mind you), but the software doesn't wear out. So in the name of the cloud (or under the guise of the cloud), microsoft finally gets their subscription service. Lapsed subscription means you can't get access to your data. Worse: if you say don't retrieve it within a certain time, they stop billing your for storage, and lease that space to someone else (and your data is lost). Or your data is given to someone else. That would be bad. But microsoft is only doing what they have been doing all along: what's best for microsoft. "But it will cost me a fortune" "But my data is mine, you can't give it away!" "But it could cost me my business" to which they reply "How is that our problem again?"
How do you know that they were calling them a shill just because they didn't agree?
Look at the damn post!
There's fuck all but a free-advert.
Smells like shill.
They aren't claiming copyright. They are requiring that it only be used for non-commercial purposes. That's rather different. You can't do that with a musical instrument because you can't put EULAs on physical objects (*IANAL, but my understanding is that it's unclear how enforcement agreements like the one being discussed actually are). But you could rent someone an instrument with a contract saying they promise to not use it for commercial purposes and then sue them if they play a concert with it.
I loved Office up till version 2010, at which point we (the educational agency I work for) switched to Google Apps for everything. The last 2 years have made me appreciate the "always there exactly as I left it everywhere I access it" of the Google solution. The fact that its free for us (educational agency) didn't hurt one bit either. Re buying all those Microsoft licenses every few years got old. I'm sure Office365 or whatever has a lot of neat stuff, but quite frankly its not free, probably full of bugs (since its new), probably still somehow bloated, and therefore still not worth it in comparison. I'd never go back to office in a million years.
sigs suck
That's like comparing apples to soy apples or some other disgusting knockoff.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
How can you protect trade secrets and IP?
How about $6/mnth?
That gets you Office, SharePoint, Cloudy Storage, an Exchange Mailbox with web access and mobile access with your own domain name, Outlook...
That's Office365.com $6/mnth per user.
It's a huge pay in my ass. But, the users love it.
offering. That was 2 years ago when I worked for a the Dept of Medicine for a large university. That said, some other departments were completely ignorant (or didn't care) about HIPPA and other regulatory laws and moved a cloud solution for pretty much everything. Problem is, some people are just idiots and will do whatever without thinking it through. Just because you're not supposed to do something doesn't mean people won't. Last time I checked, smoking weed is illegal in a lot of places in the country yet that seems pretty common...
Besides if you actually look at the cloud offering, it's not really horrible IMO. For those that use Word/Excel/Office a lot they:
1. No longer have to install some crap on their local machine.
2. No longer have to worry about SW updates for said crap.
3. Can leverage Skydrive (which is actually handy) and it includes an additional 20GB/year (normally $10 anyway).
4. Can use it from more than 1 PC (Student, 2, Home Premium 5)
don't have mod points so +1 anyway
After using Google Drive for a while, it seems clear to me that the best way to operate is to have a local folder which automatically syncs to the cloud (pretty sure MS offers something like this too). This way you don't really have to worry about how long your access lasts because you have local copies of everything. I would hope that the new cloud-centric apps with collaborative features would do something like this in reverse... save to the cloud and sync locally.
I provide end-user support for all types of software. When Microsoft launches something new, I force myself to use it so I become familiar with it. Accordingly, I just "upgraded" from Office 2010 to Office 2013. I am astounded at how ugly the new interface is. It's the same level of disgust I felt when I first experienced the Metro interface in Windows 8.
I don't know if Microsoft is going to succeed in the mobile arena with their new paradigm, but I am damn sure they're going to alienate desktop users in droves.
What's old is new again. A decade+ ago, Documentum and OpenText Livelink both had plugins that let MS Office open and save documents directly into top-notch version-controlled repositories. Then along came Microsoft with some badly-written Frontpage extensions called Sharepoint, lacking any real version control...years too late, claiming they invented the idea. Same pattern for online doc editing: Google built/acquired years of prior work to put together Google Docs/Drive, refined over multiple iterations and actually quite usable.... Along comes Office365: a pale imitation of desktop Office, yet positioned as the next big thing.
So I find the Office2013 pitch about local+cloud kind of funny, as LibreOffice/OpenOffice and Google Docs already do this... better.. cross platform... with more features...and has for years. In addition to the usual stuff at www.libreoffice.org/download/3-6-new-features-and-fixes/ .... Check this out:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd
The extension is old, but it still works like a charm on the latest LibreOffice, and provides relatively bulletproof editing and storage of documents locally/cloud and keeps them under version control. If you've seen that Google commercial where people repeatedly do a few seconds of work on each device before it's shut off or destroyed, and the work is all saved and available.... Yeah. it's like that, and it works across desktops, phones and tablets running Google Drive, and anything with a decent browser. Even my kids can't break it. Sweet.
I think not...(*poof*)
I don't care about any "cloud" features. I'm often not connected to a network. What I do care about is whether Microsoft finally decided to permit an alternative, non-ribbon, built-in, "classic" UI option, or if this is yet another version with an interface I don't personally like. If not, then I guess for yet another Office generation I'll be sticking with Office 2007 and earlier.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
At one time many home users had free or inexpensive access to MS Office through enterprise licensing. I recall install such a free copy on my mothers machine years back. If such free licensing were still available, I could see home users accessing MS Office.
The Microsoft Home Use Program is still very much alive.
HUP has a global reach and is multilingual.
The current bundle is Office Professional Plus 2013, which includes Lync.
Regional pricing varies a little, up and down. If you happen to be one of the sixty or so people living in the Pitcarin Islands, the cost is $15, plus S&H on the media. if required.
Ars Technica had this to say about Office 365 Home Premium:
Microsoft has done a lot to sweeten the pot to attract consumers into the subscription model, enlisting nearly everything but the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. While the lowest-cost perpetual-license version of Office 2013---Office 2013 Home and Student---is priced at just under $140 and includes the four core applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote), Office 365 Home Premium Edition comes with all of those applications plus the Outlook mail and calendar client, Access database, and Publisher desktop publishing tool.
Home Premium also comes with licenses for five installs of the suite---including Office 2011 for Mac installs for those households with mixed operating system allegiances. Home and Student has been trimmed down to allowing just one installation per license. And as part of its subscription, customers will also get 60 minutes a month of Skype calls to phone numbers within the US (as Microsoft continues to position Skype as the consumer version of its Lync enterprise voice, video, and messaging service). And it comes with an additional 20 gigabytes of SkyDrive cloud storage.
While you can install Office on five systems at once through Home Premium, where those five licenses are is fungible. You can manage which computers are actively using their Office user licenses from the account webpage, and you can shut off one to make room for another when necessary. That means your licenses can travel with you from computer to computer, and---at least theoretically, if you keep all your data in SkyDrive or a networked drive---you can be up and running with a new PC in a manner of minutes.
Review: Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium Edition hopes to be at your service
Phrases like "home user" mislead the geek, I think.
"Software for the professional working at home and abroad" would be closer to the truth for a product like Office. Everyone in the family may be using the program --- in part because they share the same interests and ambitions.
But for him, it is one of the fundamental tools of his trade.
I disagree, I made a good portfolio in OO and after an update the program no longer opens it. MS Office had no problem opening it. It was saved as an ods. Great job they did there....
So if your kids want to use Word to make a Lemonade Stand sign so they can sell Lemonade for .05 a cup on the front lawn? Ilegal!
Even worse your kids want to help out with Hurricane Sandy relief by making signs and posting them around the neighborhood telling people how they can help their local non-profit? Illegal!
The simplest and most sensible reading of the TOS is that if you are running a business out of your home may be forced to move up to a higher tier of service. For many of the same reasons why your ISP doesn't want you setting up a sever under a baseline residential account.
$100/year may be steep, but considering that MS is charging $169 in Australian dollars AND since the $AUS=$US, then this is a digital rip off.
Other companies have been nabbed doing the same thing, geo-locking software downloads and charging whatever they want for the same product. I am really surprised at MS for doing this.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Who cares about the desktop, desktop computers are dead and gone.
The current trend is about phones and tablets, Microsoft spent so much effort in dominating the desktop that right now they have a monopoly on a fading trend.
Free software will adapt, it can follow and lead trends like commercial software cannot.
Right now, Linux is starting to dominate the phones and tablets segment, like it has dominated the server and big scientific machines for several years already.
Both hardware and software have become good engough for regular use and this is a problem for vendors who were/are dependent on periodic upgrades. Microsoft learned the hard way that it is not immune and now it is pushing users/customers to a subscription-based model which is to ensure steady revenue stream not dependent on an upgrade cycle. Not everybody will go for it immediately but over time as old versions go one way or another out of use everybody who is using MSOffice for fee will end up on subscription.
The target market is kind of small, when you combine the online storage of your data with the recent ratification of the FISA act, why would anyone outside the US want to store their data where the US Govt can treat you like a terrorist and access it with out a valid legal reason... MICROSOFT need to put their Washington lobbyists to work repealing this invasion of legal freedoms.
I've been using the preview for quite some time. Not impressed. Outlook's integration with Lync is not working correctly, the search functionality is awful...Not seeing any improvements other than a change in the look/feel of the interface.