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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.
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?"
What about HIPPA or other similar regulatory limitations on who can see your documents?
Seems like those would kill this sort of move just as dead.
"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
...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.
Is there any high-quality software? All MS software is riddled with bugs and blatant stupidity, but so is linux and OSX. The argument isn't really about which software is the best, but which sucks least. Software is a tool - if it was perfect, you wouldn't even notice it.
Agreed. For any sort of real office/administrative work, MS Office beats the pants off Open/Libre Office. The latter's functionality in terms of two major office needs (mail merges and pivot tables, not to mention scaling spreadsheets for print) sucks to the point of being basically unusable. MS Office is typical Microsoft (different than standards for no good reason; eg. the wildcard for strings in Access is * not %), but Excel and Word are simply so much better than anything else out there that for REAL work, there's no viable alternative.
Of course, home use is a different story altogether.
No, those are the homeless people.
The people switching to Linux are all in their basements, so you can't see them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Tell that to Carmen Ortiz...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...