Microsoft Office 2019 Will Only Work on Windows 10 (theverge.com)

Microsoft on Thursday provided an update on Office 2019, in which it revealed that the apps will only run on Windows 10. From a report: In a support article for service and support of Windows and Office, Microsoft has revealed you'll need to upgrade to Windows 10 if you want the latest version of Office without subscribing to the company's Office 365 service. It's a move that's clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions, as the standalone Office 2019 software will only be supported on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 machines. Microsoft is also altering the support lifecycle for Office 2019, so it will receive 5 years of mainstream support and then "approximately 2 years of extended support."

Comments

Eat My Ass

[sexconker]

Eat my ass, MS. I'm not running Windows 10, and you can't make me!

Re:Eat My Ass

[jellomizer]

Well I guess you may be able to take a few days to get Wine setup to handle it.

However that is what my experience is.
The Boss gets a document to you and it is slightly screwed up (off fonts, or spacing) they Demand that they send it in that format. You open the file and save it and it goes off again.
Then they find out that you are not Using the newest version of office. So you have an option, upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job.

Re:Eat My Ass

[blindseer]

If I have a boss that demands I use the latest version of Microsoft Office for producing documents, and does not provide that to me on the company provided computer, then I believe you've created a false dichotomy with "upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job". Most any job would be an upgrade from that.

My work experience has been primarily in educational institutions and large technology centered corporations. In both settings there was a strong leaning on Microsoft technologies, and also a strong tendency to avoid the upgrade treadmill. Skipping versions was the norm. If Microsoft comes out with a new OS and/or Office suite every three years or so, and provides support for six years, then we'll see an upgrade on new systems every six years. New computers that come in with the latest Microsoft product would be downgraded to the standard or the company would simply tolerate supporting the last two (or even three) versions of Microsoft products. If my boss in one of these companies demands that the latest and greatest version of a Microsoft product be used then I'd point to the company policy on supported file formats. He cannot demand the use of the latest and greatest as that would mean half the company would be unable to open the file and read it as intended.

Even with these companies I've worked for having a strong leaning on Microsoft there is enough corporate memory on past efforts of supporting proprietary file formats that any document of any importance must be archived in a standardized format. This usually means ASCII text. If there is a need for some formatting then the text will have markup in LaTeX, HTML, or be stored as a PDF.

That's your experience compared to my own. The question I have, and pose to the reader, which is more likely for others to experience? Your situation, or my own? In my experience the computer and software I needed was provided to me at company expense. It appears that in your experience the boss would demand the use of a proprietary and fresh off the shelf file format, and demanded that you pay for the software yourself on a computer that I also assume you had to buy as well. If he expects you to buy the latest Microsoft software from your own pocket then, again, most any job would be an upgrade from that.

Re: Eat My Ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Using LibreOffice (and previously OpenOffice) for over 10 years here.

Dealing with a bunch of other businesses (I do consulting) and never an issue here.

I get that there are certain features that some companies use (like VBA macros in spreadsheets) that dont work, but really for the vast majority (i'd say 85%+) LibreOffice is good enough. If you want pixel-perfection Word is not the solution in any case.

Re:Eat My Ass

[zwarte piet]

http://www.sandraandwoo.com/20...

Re:Eat My Ass

[The123king]

Sounds more like "upgrade your job"

Re:Eat My Ass

[erapert]

Then they find out that you are not Using the newest version of office. So you have an option, upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job.

If you work at the kind of place that cares more about fonts and spacing than about getting work done then you and everyone else at that job deserves to be put out on the street.

If you can't kill off Win7

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

By showing a "better" (ahem) OS, then kill it off by writing your "best" (cough) software to only run on your newest OS.

Been that way for decades from MS. Nothing new.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Wrath0fb0b]

Yeah, there's definitely no legitimate reason that an upcoming project would decide to deprecate support for an OS that will be 10 years old at the point of release (Win7 came out in '09). Supporting and doing quality assurance on multiple OS targets is totally free from an engineering and testing standpoint. All API features from newer OSes are backported to decades-old ones.

Note that LibreOffice dropped support for OSX 10.8 (2012) and required various Linux components (Kernel/GTK) from 2006.

Removing support for old stuff at the right time is part of the software flow. Supporting the everything-on-everything model means less resources (both development and testing) for other stuff. Surely there's a "too soon" for deprecation" but also a "too late". One decade sounds pretty dang reasonable.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

h, there's definitely no legitimate reason that an upcoming project would decide to deprecate support for an OS that will be 10 years old

You really need to stop being a voice of reason around here. I mean we can't have these great hate microsoft bashing threads if you keep using your common sense.

Geezz. get with the program.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[AmiMoJo]

A far more obvious and likely explanation is that they are simply reducing their costs by not supporting older versions of Windows. It costs money to develop for and test for those older versions, and to keep supporting them.

Most users never upgrade their version of Office. It comes with the PC, that's it. Businesses and home users alike. MS don't sell Windows 7 or 8.1 any more, so it will likely have near zero impact on their Office sales and save them a load of money.

Re: If you can't kill off Win7

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not let me try to install the software and see if it runs? Tell me it's unsupported and let me install at my own risk. If it doesn't work, so be it, and I have no problem with this. But don't block me from installing it.

There's a similar issue with Android apps. I've previously purchased some apps for older versions of Android that the publishers have decided to no longer support. That's fine, and it's reasonable that the apps aren't tested on or updated for newer versions of Android. I have no problem with this. However, I do have a problem with the publishers blocking me from installing those apps on my newer Androod devices with newer versions of the OS. Because the apps aren't supported, the publisher has decided they won't even let me try to install those apps. That's really annoying, especially because I've paid for some of those apps, and am being artificially prevented from using them. If I install them and something doesn't work, that's fine. But I believe the fact that I've paid for those apps should give me the right to try installing them.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[bluefoxlucid]

You really need to stop being a voice of reason around here.

Somebody has to. You should see my political campaign. I got in an argument with some guy who keeps telling me capitalism is past its end and it's time we moved on; he was very angry when I pointed out that the CEO of Home Depot taking lower pay and fewer bonuses wouldn't "pay for higher wages and benefits" because Home Depot has 300,000 employees and the entire executive suite nets $28/year per employee in cash compensation between them. His argument was I'm wrong because "their wealth is built on the backs of mistreated employees" (notice this ignores the numerical analyses).

Even when you ditch the socialists, that's the voice of today's progressive left movement: make the rich pay, make the businesses pay, make everybody with power pay, make Wall Street pay. I can agree with regulation about banks and such; and I'm interested in something today's progressives aren't talking about: strategies to bring the poor out of poverty and provide more economic fairness to the middle-class.

It makes people angry. It's like the progressive left don't really care about the poor, only about the rich. Somebody's got to say it.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[samspock]

Well this goes for Windows 8.1 but everyone hates that one so we won't mention it.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[nateman1352]

Supporting and doing quality assurance on multiple OS targets is totally free from an engineering and testing standpoint.

... except for the fact that Office 365 subscribers will be able to run Office 2019 on Win7. Since MSFT is already doing that engineering work for Office 365 this comes down to nothing more than an artificial limitation; intended to herd their customers in the direction that MSFT wants them to go.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Anonymous Coward]

Declaring Windows 7 "Unsupported" is one thing. Deliberately disabling the new software is another.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[blind biker]

Geezz. get with the program.

Eh... smells like a Microsoft sockpuppet.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

It makes people angry. It's like the progressive left don't really care about the poor, only about the rich. Somebody's got to say it

Sounds like the two of us have been to the same schools. I don't mind if someone wants to bitch and moan about something. I'm cool with that but at least have some ideal about what you are bitch'n about. Use your brain and don't just take the talking points from Foxnews or CNN as gospel. Yeah I like to honk off the alt left and the alt right.

Like the current arguments on the daca program. OMG, Trump is going to kick 800,000 people out of the country! Except that isn't what is happening. All he did was kick the program back to Congress where it belongs and told them to fix this mess.

An that is what is happening. Trump sends congress a compromise. Congress ether agrees, or sends it back with their conditions. An it goes back and forth till a deal is reached. But all progressives see is Trump is kicking 800,000 people out of the country.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[SeaFox]

Removing support for old stuff at the right time is part of the software flow. Supporting the everything-on-everything model means less resources (both development and testing) for other stuff. Surely there's a "too soon" for deprecation" but also a "too late". One decade sounds pretty dang reasonable.

Isn't the software supposed to be to fulfill a specific purpose for the customer.
We're talking about a business application suite, with a user base that a large portion of which are still using Windows 7 for various reasons, and Windows 7 is still under support until 2020.

What are the differences between standalone Office and online subscription that necessitate this higher Windows version?
This smells of nothing more than Microsoft trying to punish businesses for not moving to Windows 10.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[aussiekrom]

It's pretty clear that a lot of /.'s commenters aren't on board with the MS train, but sitting in the private sector I.T. industry, it's all about products and services being fit for purpose, and MS still have the perception of that to almost anyone in business that I know or deal with. That's not to say that it's completely correct, or that other products/services/options aren't there, (Libre Office definitely has value as an alternative) but such a majority wont even contemplate it for a heap of reasons both real and perceived. With all that said, if a decent OS that goes free, or anything but subscription based before MS make subscription Windows the only option, I think there could be an interesting tussle. And now I'm back to trying to convince 70+ year old directors that cloud services are NOT weather dependent.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[chmod a x mojo]

If the fucking OS is still supported why wouldn't Installing the latest damn office suite still be available.

Support ends:

Win 7 - Jan. 14 2020
Win 8/8.1 - Jan. 10 2023
Server 2012R2 - Oct. 10 2023

Especially for Windows 8 machines, why the hell should they be forced to run older and likely not updated ( or updated as fast ) versions of office when the OS itself is supported for 4 years yet when office 2019 comes out?

Note that LibreOffice dropped support for OSX 10.8 (2012) and required various Linux components (Kernel/GTK) from 2006.

I wasn't aware that LibreOffice was a large corporation that prided itself on backwards compatibility and being the default go to for an office suite. Here I thought it was a mostly volunteer Open Source effort that didn't have gobs of money to throw at people to keep maximum compatibility with different versions of operating systems.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

Eh... smells like a Microsoft sockpuppet.

An you smell like the typical computer bigot doesn't have a clue what they are talking about. I remember the Amiga religious wars so I know what one sounds like. You think the sun shines out a penguins ass and open source is the best thing since sex and blow.

Well it isn't. Both windows and linux have their strengths and weaknesses. There are place where one belongs and the other doesn't. An that is a fact.

Attitudes like yours are not the answer to everything. In fact its this kind of crap that is part of the problem. Stop being part of the problem and grow up.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[rogoshen1]

oh come on. 7 is still in very wide usage. They aren't doing this for technical reasons, it's purely because they want to foist windows 10 on their users.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[LinuxIsGarbage]

If the fucking OS is still supported why wouldn't Installing the latest damn office suite still be available.

Support ends:

Win 7 - Jan. 14 2020
Win 8/8.1 - Jan. 10 2023
Server 2012R2 - Oct. 10 2023

Especially for Windows 8 machines, why the hell should they be forced to run older and likely not updated ( or updated as fast ) versions of office when the OS itself is supported for 4 years yet when office 2019 comes out?

Note that LibreOffice dropped support for OSX 10.8 (2012) and required various Linux components (Kernel/GTK) from 2006.

I wasn't aware that LibreOffice was a large corporation that prided itself on backwards compatibility and being the default go to for an office suite. Here I thought it was a mostly volunteer Open Source effort that didn't have gobs of money to throw at people to keep maximum compatibility with different versions of operating systems.

By comparison when Office 2010 was released, XP (which was still dominant on business desktop, just like 7 is now) was supported, even though it was in extended support that lasted till 2014.

Office 2013 only supported 7 and newer, even though Vista was in extended support till 2017. Office 2016 likewise only supported 7 or newer.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[rogoshen1]

If the alternative is dll hell, or even more bloated programs, i think i know which route i'd prefer be taken.

Do you remember DOS games back in the day? That's what you're suggesting we return to.

For example.. what makes more sense: sim city 2000, doom2, and might and magic world of xeen each using their own buggy as fuck audio implementation -- which also barely works, and even then depends on your particular flavor of sound card..
OR letting the developers simply worry about making their game compatible with an audio API that pretty much ensures the sound works across the board?

(or did i just get whooshed?)

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[toejam13]

Not true. The WinAPI (as it is now called) gained numerous new functions with Windows 7, 8, and 10. What it hasn't done much of is depreciate functions. My programs can still call unsafe array and string functions under Windows 10. The only issue I ever encounter is a MSVC compiler warning if I use them in my code.

I typically program using Windows 7 as my minimum WinAPI compatibility level (WINVER 0x601). I have come across a couple of functions that were only available for higher API levels that would have been nice to use, but I've been able to work around them. I imagine that as time goes by, that will be harder to do.

Try looking at some WinAPI documentation sometime. It isn't as static as you make it out to be.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

You can also see the effects of the "progressive" left here on slashdot. Anything that doesn't fit the status quo of "trump bad" gets modded down.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm .. maybe .. I'm not denying it

However:

Windows 7 came out in 2009 and Office 2019 comes out 10 years later than Windows 7. You can buy stand alone non-subscription copies of Office 2016 that will be supported more or less until 2026 that run on Windows 7. This decision, to really affect a Windows 7 user, would mean the user would have to want to install Office in 2019 on their Office-less Windows 7 installation .. that will not be a common scenario.

In other words, it doesn't matter. There will not be much of a practical demand for Office 2019 on Windows 7 computers. They will already have a version of Office up to and including 2016 (which should be sufficient until 2026 or even beyond) or they haven't bought Office because they never will.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

Making sense or not, a busness should always do what the customer wants. A business that forces a customer to do something against their will ends up losing customers. A business always exists to provide products to customers, the whims of the developers are unimportant to that. If extra developer time is needed to support backwards compatibility, then any reasonable company will allocate extra developer time.

There are many software companies that manage to keep support for old products for longer than a decade. Of course, even after a company deprecates a product and drops support, that product will still live on at the customers' sites. You cannot force a company to stop using a product they paid for and are still using.

LibreOffice is not produced by a for-profit business. If they piss of customers then that's their problem. Microsoft can piss off customers too, and seems to be experts at doing so, but it canot force pissed off customers to keep paying the Microsoft tax. No one actually needs Office 365 or Office 19, anymore than they need new versions of Windows.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

What does this have with killing off old software? Capitalism says that you should keep making the software if customers are still paying for it. There are companies that will support twenty year old software still, as long as the checks clear. That's why Cobol programmers can demand a good salary.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

Well they do but people are acting like you have no choice in the matter. Nobody is forcing people to upgrade to windows 10 or even office 2019. There are plenty of choices out there you have to just decide which one you want to do. Nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head.

Yes windows 7 is in wide usage right now and its 10 years old. At the end of its life. An before someone chimes in that its still usable I would like to point out so is Centos 5 which is also EOL and no longer supported.

Re: If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

If a customer is paying, it makes sense to do what the customer wants. And many customers do buy support from Microsoft. But even if this is a one-shot purchase, the customer may still buy other products in the future. That means, don't annoy your customers if you want to retain their business.

Also notice that Windows 7 is still supported by Microsoft, it has not reached end of life, and some customers are still paying for Windows 7 support. What is different here is that they're saying a new product will not work on a supported version of Windows. That sounds a lot like annoying the customers to me.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

I like it. Doesn't mean I want Windows 10. But it is better than Windows 7 in many ways. Sure it's got some ugly stuff, but so does Windows 7.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[No Tears In The End]

• DACA ain't shit. Gay wedding cakes aren't shit.

If that's true, prove it. Abandon your positions on those issues and focus on what *really* important.

NTITE

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jezwel]

as long as the checks clear.

MS gets the same amount in SA regardless of what you're running, but they can cut costs by ditching older versions of product. Less testing, less security patching, less everything.

Sure you can pay on top of that for support for old products - like those organisations paying for WinXP support - but that doesn't mean MS is forced to give that org. Office 2019 for WinXP.

Until you have to manage multiple versions of products that stretch back over a few decades, you don't realise how much resources are spent on support. It's a massive PITA.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

Gay wedding cakes aren't shit

I'm not sure I understand the gay wedding cake issue ether. Some narrow minded individual doesn't want to make you a cake. Take your money and business elsewhere. So their personal life choices don't agree with your's. Are their choices hurting you? No? Then take there money and make them a damn cake.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

I have dealt with multiple versions of products stretching back a few decades. That's why they paid us. As a developer it is frustrating, but as a customer they're kept happy.

Microsoft is losing market share, it's not really a smart move to further annoy the customers.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[DNS-and-BIND]

Socialists don't actually love the poor. They just hate the rich. They called the poor deplorables.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[dwillden]

Nobody is saying software will no longer run on it. They are saying Their Shiny New Software will not be able to run on the Decade old OS because it lacks many key functions. But you will be free to continue using Office16 until 2026. Well beyond the EOL of Win 7.

Technology moves forward, At some point your company needs to join the flow. If you stick with MS products your hardware gets updated more frequently than once a decade, shouldn't your software?

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Ash-Fox]

Present day computers are completely fucked, a giant step backwards in time, where you have to let it "warm up" after turning the damn thing on

My monitor takes about two seconds to start and by then, my computer is already booted and ready?

600 megabytes for a printer driver! And it takes 20 minutes to install!

Why doesn't it install in like less than a minute for you?

Oh, and what kind of dlls would you have when nothing is dynamically linked?

My Amiga used share libraries quite commonly?

Don't you remember Mac programs back in the day?

Yes, didn't even have true multi-tasking.

They had it partially right, the entire thing was in a single folder, no "installation" required.

No, that came later and it was broken from day one since developers couldn't properly deal with user information.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[thegarbz]

Which is all completely irrelevant since Windows 7 will be out of extended support only a few months after Office 2019 comes out, and thus they don't need to support their users.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[The123king]

One decade sounds pretty dang reasonable.

Maybe someone could tell Intel that, so we can get away from nearly four decades of backwards compatibility that clutters up the x86 instruction set...

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[bluefoxlucid]

But maybe it makes more sense for the CEO to make half a million and the top hundred people make 25000 (a significant increase for them), and the rest make 20000 as usual.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Why do they get that $5,000?

Philosophical reasoning aside, what the hell is going on with the other 299,900 employees who still get shit? You're not helping; you're just creating a $5,000 bonus for a tiny force of elites. Look into Home Depot's bonus structure to see how that works (pretty much the median employee gets $250 and almost nobody gets over $400, but the announcement is "$1,000 bonuses for everyone!")

those are two extremes. There are other possibilities

Sure. AIG with its highly-compensated executives gets $148/year from each of 56,400 employees to the entire key executive suite in cash compensation. If you include other non-equity compensation (i.e. all the perks), it's $528/year per employee. Sinclair's CEO gets $119, while the entire executive suite there gets nearly $1,000 per employee in cash compensation--for 8,400 employees. Sinclair's executive suite doesn't get so much in the way of other expenditures as compensation.

Generally, the ones with fewer employees take more per employee. The service businesses are typically big: you have a lot of low-paid retail workers, and only a little executive comp per each. The ones that are good examples of high executive pay representing high dollar values generally have a workforce of middle-income employees who are a bit less impressed by an extra few hundred a year, and mostly complain that the guy at the next business over is doing the same thing for $15k more pay and better benefits--which is valid, but we're not having trouble finding food.

That's pretty much my point: the executive pay is usually not as egregious as it looks; and redistributing it is not a viable strategy for reducing poverty. A few people will be better off, maybe; that's not enough.

when there is dishonesty or breaking the rules in pure market forces, it is prudent to make sure wealth isn't being too unevenly distributed.

I'm a social democrat. I believe in a strong system of capitalism and a free market, with regulations to ensure these systems operate in a socially-equitable and economically-optimal manner, and social programs to redistribute wealth to create equity. Such social programs have historically included unemployment insurance, retirement and disability pension, housing assistance, nutritional assistance (SNAP, WIC), and so forth.

All the talk about income distribution and equality, and nothing about equity. There's a difference, you know: equality means similarity, and so increasing equality means to reduce the difference between people; while equity means similarity in terms of means, and increasing equity means reducing the difference between people's opportunities. Public school provides equality; public school programs to provide alternative teaching for learning-impaired students so as to increase their success provide equity.

I have an approach for this.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Wrath0fb0b]

I thought we were upset with Microsoft pushing the Windows 10 upgrade too aggressively, not failing to provide an upgrade path.

Can we have a straight story here?

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Wrath0fb0b]

Lol, rasterized graphics to a monitor straight from the application layer? Encapsulation is for jerks, let's have each application reimplement a hardware-assisted compositing engine that works for every single graphics card on the market! For the lulz.

Also, you know Mac programs have always been an entire self-contained folder of stuff where the UI doesn't let you descend into it by clicking it. Literally that's it. Linking by relative path plus a UI where a folder looks like a single thing.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[david_thornley]

Refusing to bake a cake is one thing. Calling a potential customer an abomination before the Lord is another. The situation with that bakery escalated, and as far as I can tell the bakers started it.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[david_thornley]

Yes, Microsoft can get approximately the same money whether they do a good job or a bad one. This is a clear market failure. In a free market, if one company does a bad job, other companies suck up their business. Normal capitalistic and free market principles do not apply to Microsoft, and so people look for other solutions.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[david_thornley]

A business that forces a customer to do something against their will ends up losing customers.

The only thing that cost Microsoft customers was tablet computers. Other than that, they're doing great by making customers do whatever it is Microsoft wants them to do. That's the basic market failure here.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

And yet, customers are not upgrading to Windows 10 despite the heavy handed approach, especially with the money making enterprise customers. Linux is making lots more inroads in the server market. Overall MS marketshare is going down especially as PCs are less popular and smartphones and tablets are taking off.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[jwhyche]

Well a escalation would put the issue in a new light. I guess my philosophy "its not hurting you so it none of your god damn business what consenting adults do in their spare time" doesn't appeal to everyone.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Waccoon]

How'd they get 300,000 employees in the first place?

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[toddestan]

Capitalism says that you should keep making the software if customers are still paying for it. There are companies that will support twenty year old software still, as long as the checks clear.

Well, not really. You could end up like the place I worked, where consider time and resources were spent supporting old products despite those products not even having a large customer base. Their main competition was our other product lines, so all it ended up doing was cannibalizing sales of more profitable products. Yet management wouldn't kill off those old products. We described it as having to chase after those dollars, no matter what the cost.

I'm sure Microsoft realize the situation for what it is. Sure, they can continue to sell Office 2016 alongside 2019. But Microsoft effectively has a monopoly on Office. If you need Office, sure you might buy 2016 if it's available, but if it's not you're going to buy 2019 anyway, so why still sell the old version?

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[david_thornley]

The money-making enterprise customers will upgrade to 10. They have no choice. There's still a couple of years of 7 being supported, and that may be extended (it was for XP).

As far as overall Microsoft marketshare going down due to phones and tablets, that's the effect I was referring to. Microsoft's screwups are unlikely to cost it significant marketshare, but their market is shrinking, at least in the consumer space.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

Linux is a choice, and it's making more inroads into the back office. For the developer's cubicles the Mac is much more popular than I remember. I think last year the biggest Windows users were hardware developers, because of lock in with tools and software that isn't portable (meaning people keep around Windows XP or XP under vmware for that purpose).

It may not be the year of Linux on the desktop, but Microsoft is not the unstoppable juggernaut it used to be.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[Darinbob]

You can always assist the customers in migrating. Instead of heavy handed tactics, offer a steeply discounted upgrade price, with extra support and customer service to cover migration headaches.

You can also stay with the current Office for as long as possible. If every customer immediately jumps through every hoop Microsoft presents, Microsoft will sit back smugly. If the sales don't go well, they'll rethink their position, even temporarily as happened with Windows 8.1. Customers need to show that they're an important part of the relationship and not a passive codependent.

Re:If you can't kill off Win7

[bluefoxlucid]

Luck, probably. More people meme'd to Home Depot and Lowes than Heckinger. Big contractors actually source their materials from these big home improvement stores: while we think of them as consumer stores, they're actually the supply chain for pretty much all residential and commercial construction work. Lots of stores, lots of employees.

In any case, I'm not concerned with CEOs pulling $20 or $100 off every employee every year and becoming millionaires. I'm concerned with employees working themselves to death and still barely being able to afford rent and food, while going without access to healthcare they can afford--because it's not "affordable" if it's only affordable for someone else.

Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[BrendaEM]

LibreOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and a database.
It's free!
https://www.libreoffice.org/

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[sirber]

It's free!

free? shut up and take my money!

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegreatbob]

protip: it works very well with older MS formats, e.g. Office 97 Excel/Word documents... docx and xlsx formats.... not so much. My experience has been that it tends to crash pretty often with those, so consider saving a working copy in either native or old-microsoft formats.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[Kenja]

But that's unpossible! Microsoft said that they were going to use an open XML format!

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[supremebob]

We can be pretty certain that documents made in Office 2019 will look like shit when viewed or edited with it. We've seen this issue before with every Office release... they make small changes to the document format that screw stuff up.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[Osgeld]

no shit, thank's for this ground breaking news

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[StormReaver]

My experience has been that it tends to crash pretty often with those.

In the many years I've been using OO.o and LibreOffice on Linux, I have never experienced a crash while reading or writing MS Office documents -- old or new.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Been using LibreOffice for years. Don't miss MS Office at all. 'Nuff said.

Re: Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're joking, but I want to post this as a reminder that they actually will take your money. LibreOffice, as with many other open source projects, solicits donations to fund continued development of their software. For those who aren't skilled at coding or don't have the time to do so, monetary donations are one of the best ways to support free and open source software.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[antdude]

Too bad its compatibility is still an issue like with formattings and layouts, losing multiple Excel sheets in XLSX files, etc. :(

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[twms2h]

I have been trying to do that (and before with OpenOffice), but it's just not on par. My latest gripe is the "speed" of LibreOffice Calc as compared to any version of MS Excel. It's just atrociously slow on large files, where "large" actually isn't that large at all. I'm not going to spend my time waiting for the bloody program just to scroll.

Granted: The average home user might not notice that. At home, I have never used any version of MS Office.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[michelcolman]

And it only opens in MS Word.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegarbz]

LibreOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and a database.
It's free!
https://www.libreoffice.org/

Office 2019 is new and shiny. It's Free*!

*Free to corporate users who pay contractual subscriptions to MS anyway. Everyone else doesn't give a shit and will happily use Office 97.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegreatbob]

+1, that'd be rich xD

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegreatbob]

I think part of my problem is that these documents are coming from my employer's business clients... many of them show signs of aging. People dragging 10+ year old templates through multiple format conversions, and then just deleting the contents of an existing document to use as a template... that sort of thing (e.g. an excel spreasheet that is several hundred kilobytes despite containing no actual entries in cells). I'm placing the blame on Microsoft for being unable to consistently turn out clean and bug-free files.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegreatbob]

Also of note, I've been using staroffice derivatives (starting with a package distributed for SuSE 8.0) for many years, and the experience has always been much better on Linux. Unfortunately, I don't have the latitude to use it as my primary OS at work... next time I get a crap file, I'll see if I can replicate it on Linux.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegreatbob]

While I do appreciate the sentiment, keeping Google's grubby little track-happy fingers out of an established open source project would be an entirely positive thing, in my book.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[thegreatbob]

It seems to have issues determining when it does or doesn't have to process every single row/column in the document; another advantage to using old MS Excel format, if you can deal with the 65536 row limitation.

Re:Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free!

[sydbarrett74]

Too bad there's no integrated substitute for Outlook. And no, Thunderbird isn't the answer. To co-opt Churchill: 'Outlook is the worst PIM ever tried, except for all the others.'

Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[sqorbit]

As a self employed contractor software subscriptions are killing my business. Adobe has forced me into a subscription model where I'm paying 50$ a month to use their software, Microsoft is pretty much forcing the subscription model of Office 365 on me. Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon? My monthly fees are going to pile up it's going to make the decision to seek open source alternatives and simple choice.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[BenFranske]

Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon?

They already do for bigger businesses, it's called "software assurance". Believe you me, if/when they could figure out how to force smaller business users into subscription Windows they will. There's a reason that the commercial software publishers (Adobe, Autodesk, etc.) are all going subscription based, hint, it's not because it's better for consumers. It's because it's much more lucrative for them. These people are in business to make money, which means taking yours. They've just gotten better at it.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[drunken_boxer777]

Not trolling, but if $60/month ($50 for Adobe and $10 for Office365)* is "killing" your business, perhaps you need to rethink your business? You should recover that cost in less than an hour of billable work. Sure, it's important to keep all overhead costs down, but for most businesses these would be small time costs.

*Cost is based on 1 user, which is a reasonable assumption given that you are a "a self employed contractor".

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[nukenerd]

Adobe has forced me into a subscription model where I'm paying 50$ a month to use their software

Sounds like you already had a perpetual copy of something from Adobe - Photoshop I guess. So what was wrong with just continuing with it? Have they invented some new colours or something?

Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon?

Yes.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[StormReaver]

My monthly fees are going to pile up it's going to make the decision to seek open source alternatives and simple choice.

The longer you wait, the more painful the transition. Get off the fence and start now, while you still have a business.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[jellomizer]

Monthly fees really do add up and hurt a business. Even if you are Paying more for one time cost version you have the option of using a bit longer then expected, budget an upgrade, reinvest the money you are paying for subscriptions.

As a contractor you may not get paid every month, why are you forcing all your expenses to be monthly.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[aaarrrgggh]

Adobe, MS... they have nothing on AutoDesk at $300/month.

It adds up quickly when you can’t stretch software lives. Thankfully I have a $15k package that is perpetual... and 10 years old.

We pay about $1,000/year per person for software; it starts to get tough.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[jellomizer]

A contractor doesn't get paid on a nice timely basis. They may get paid Quarterly or after the project is completed. While they are working on the project they will need to function off of what they have saved up. Then they get a big payday, and save a big portion so they can survive their next project.
A monthly fee is a slow leak during the pay times, If one could outright purchase the full product, then they can buy it right after the big pay day, and be able to have a slower leak in their finances, or at least more control on their expenses, such as turning off the lights, keeping the room cool or warmer....

Chances are the fee isn't actually killing him, but it adds to the worry during the times between payments.

Re: Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if every piece of software you used had this model. That's the OPs point. Eventually it isn't sustainable for a small business.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[simonreid]

Is that 15K per person? Because that sounds like 15 years worth of subscriptions if you are paying 1Kpp... why on earth wouldn't you subscribe if buying up front would take 16 years to pay off?

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[jwhyche]

As a self employed contractor software subscriptions are killing my business

I don't know about the subscription model adobe is forcing you into. I have found there are plenty of cheaper alternatives to their expensive software.

As for the Microsoft subscription module I've seen that is actually cheaper to pony up for a year in advance than to go month to month. $69 for a personal office license for 1 cpu, phone, and tablet. An $99 for 5 cpu, phones and tablets. The subscription module is still cheaper than just buying the office package off the shelf.

You are writing all these off on your taxes right?

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Jahoda]

As a self employed contractor software subscriptions are killing my business.

The Cost of Office 365 small business is $12.50/month. That includes Exchange, Office, Skype, OneDrive. The cost for Office 365 on its own is ~$8.75/month.

No one is preventing you from purchasing Office outright, but the simple fact is that if you cannot afford $12.50 per employee/month for them to have email connectivity and an office suite, then you need to rethink your business planning. May I ask what you do about their telephone access?

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[neilo_1701D]

As for the Microsoft subscription module I've seen that is actually cheaper to pony up for a year in advance than to go month to month. $69 for a personal office license for 1 cpu, phone, and tablet. An $99 for 5 cpu, phones and tablets. The subscription module is still cheaper than just buying the office package off the shelf.

$69 for a terabyte of cloud storage AND $30/month Skype credits is actually pretty good...

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[DigiShaman]

It's about break-even when you consider a full lump-n-dump of the full suite every so many years vs monthly where you always get the latest edition.

It's a win-win for both businesses that rely on the software and Microsoft as there's a fixed cost that can be budgeted each year. It's consistency vs unknown expenditures. Businesses prefer the former.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[jwhyche]

It really isn't a bad deal. A terabyte of dropbox runs me $99 bucks a year. Dropbox is more compatible across devices but if I'm just using onedrive for backups of my personal desktop its hard to beat. The thing I really don't use is the skype credits but its nice to know they are there if I need them.

I really never understood the raw hatred people have here for the office subscription package. It's reasonably priced, and cheaper than buying the full package in the store. Plus subscription plans have been the norm for business software for decades. This is really not anything new.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[edtice1559]

I hate to argue with somebody who is actually doing something when I'm not (I work for a company that provides all of the tools we need). But the cost of office subscriptions is *much* cheaper than the purchase prices in the past. Office used to run around $100 for the purchase. And then upgrades every other year were in the $60 range for an average of $80/year. Now a subscription is $60/year! So unless you were going to stay on old versions, the subscription model is price competitive.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[burningcpu]

My assumption is that not everyone needs the $15k package, or that it could be rotated among the users.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Zak3056]

Adobe is actually not too bad, at least for Acrobat--We don't buy Acrobat anymore, preferring to do subscriptions as the break even is three years and we try to keep Acrobat within one version of current. For us, this was a wash either way, and the subs are more flexible than the fixed licenses were.

Microsoft is middle of the road. O365 is always going to cost more, software-wise, than perpetual office, and given that we're on a 6-7 year upgrade cycle for Office, this is a pretty serious increase in cost. Adding Exchange to that mix makes it more interesting, except for having to give up control of our email infrastructure and storage. But cost-wise, it's not terrible.

Autodesk is, as you note, absolutely terrible. Their costs are through the roof, and their transparent money grab with maintenance plan price hikes is absurd. Nevertheless, we moved our Autodesk software to subscription this year, because it was actually cheaper than staying on maintenance. If we ever forget to cut a PO, or if we ever decide the cost is too high to continue with the yearly cycle, we've lost our perpetual licenses and a roughly $200k capital investment. We're NOT happy about the position we're in, but the business decision was easy to make.

Bentley is the worst. About a decade ago, they changed their license manager from a restrictive model (like FlexLM) to a permissive seat counting model. They swore at the time they would NEVER use this for billing purposes. About three years ago, surprise, they started sending invoices when you went over your license count. There is no way to restrict license usage without going to third party products, and they count in something absurd called calendar hours (example: Alice opens ustation at 10:05AM and uses it for five minutes. Bob opens it at 10:30 and uses it for five minutes. Carol opens it at 10:45 and uses it for five minutes. Bentley says you're responsible for three licenses in use).

The money grab sucks, but it's the price of doing business. The people who thought this up can go DIAF with the epipen rent seekers, but there's basically no alternative if you want to continue to play in certain markets.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[tsqr]

Is that 15K per person? Because that sounds like 15 years worth of subscriptions if you are paying 1Kpp... why on earth wouldn't you subscribe if buying up front would take 16 years to pay off?

I think you might be confused. Here's how I read it:

He has a perpetual Autodesk license; he's not paying anything per month for that because he bought that license outright 10 years ago for $15,000. He's also paying $1,000/month/person for other software subscriptions, and that would increase to $1,300/month/person if he had to subscribe to Autodesk as well.

At $300/month, the $15,000 he spent on the perpetual license 10 years ago would be eaten up in a little more than 4 years for a single seat.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[drinkypoo]

I don't know about the subscription model adobe is forcing you into. I have found there are plenty of cheaper alternatives to their expensive software.

There is no great alternative to Photoshop or InDesign. There are some buggy, crashy OSS alternatives with inferior UI, but that's it.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[cayenne8]

As a self employed contractor software subscriptions are killing my business. Adobe has forced me into a subscription model where I'm paying 50$ a month to use their software, Microsoft is pretty much forcing the subscription model of Office 365 on me. Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon? My monthly fees are going to pile up it's going to make the decision to seek open source alternatives and simple choice.

Not sure what all you're using from Adobe. I myself have resisted the move to the rental model of software they have switched to.

If you are using Photoshop, take a look at: Affinity Photo. I you are a windows user, scroll all the way to the bottom there is a link for the windows version, and as I understand works just as well as the Mac version does. The engine is actually much faster than PS, it does 99% of what PS does...only better. It is about $50, and perpetual license...and so far over past couple years I've owned it, they've put out several updates/upgrades for free.

They also make a AI competitor, in Affinity Designer

If you use Adobe Premier, you might look at DaVinci Resolve one of the best color grading apps out there, and the NLE and sound is working nicely too. It is quite optimized for multi-core CPUs and will use your GPUs' well too, unlike Premier which often won't use all your equipment efficiently.

They also make Fusion which will substitute for After Effects (although there is a learning curve to use the nodal paradigm).

OH by the way, those last two products from Blackmagic Design...the FREE versions do about 99% of what the paid for versions do and those are only I think about $299 paid.

So, do look around, there are a number of valid alternatives to many Adobe products that have come out to serve the market that doesn't want to rent their fucking software.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[drinkypoo]

Maybe you should moderate your expectations.

Read my comment again, and show where I expect FOSS to be equivalent to commercial software. I don't.

GIMP is GIMP, not Photoshop. Learn to use GIMP, and you'll find you'll be able to do most things Photoshop can do.

GIMP is missing whole classes of feature which Photoshop's got. So no. At the point at which I need more than paint.net, I need more than GIMP as well.

If you want something to use instead of InDesign, there is Scribus, unless you want to go ham with Latex. Again, it's not InDesign, and might be quite alien to someone used to that since it seems to draw more on Quark, but both of them can still get the job done, if you know what you're doing.

Scribus doesn't measure up to Quark, either, let alone InDesign. Trying to do mundane things will crash it. It just ain't up to handling pages with more than a few objects on them.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[blindseer]

I really never understood the raw hatred people have here for the office subscription package.

I do. Software is a tool. It's also information. I can buy information and I can buy tools.

Let's consider software as information. If I buy information in the form of a book, newspaper, magazine, or etchings in a stone tablet, then I own that information. Copyright law might at least stipulate I own that copy of the information. This same information might need updating periodically but if I'm satisfied with the old information then I can keep it on a shelf or in a drawer and refer to it as I wish. If I feel a need to have this information updated regularly then I might get a subscription from the information provider, such as with a newspaper, magazine, or what not. When I get new information I don't expect to have to lose access to the old information, or lose access to the old information if I end my subscription.

Let's consider software as a tool. If I buy a tool then I expect that tool to work for me so long as it is relevant to my work and so long as I maintain it. If I buy a hammer, or table saw, then I expect to be able to use that tool as I wish. That use of the tool might not be "approved" by the company or person that made it but then it's my choice on how it's used. If I happen to damage the tool in normal operation then I have some assurance of the manufacturer providing some means to rectify the damage, this might cost money for this service but we expect this service to be far less than buying a new tool. Most everyone understands that this support fades in time but also if the tool is cared for by the user then it should keep working indefinitely as it came originally. I might buy some kind of support on this tool, such as a maintenance contract, either from the maker of the tool or a third party. I don't expect the tool to be confiscated if I don't pay for support from the manufacturer. We expect that tools will wear out, become obsolete, or generally a new tool will have to be purchased to replace the old, but this time is expected to be when the user decides, not the tool maker.

Subscriptions on software means I'm paying rent on something that someone made for me. If I buy a house then I don't expect to have to keep paying the carpenter or lose my home. That person got paid for his labors and I expect him to go away after being paid for his work. If he keeps coming back for payment afterwards, threatening to take my home if I don't pay, then we'd call that extortion.

These companies can call it a subscription, and perhaps correlate it to paying rent or buying a maintenance contract, but in many people's minds it's just extortion. If people see software as payment for manufacturing a tool or collecting/creating information, which seems reasonable to me, then they should expect payment for that work and go away. If they want to keep getting paid then they should come up with a new product that people see value in obtaining, just like the carpenter building new houses or perhaps doing maintenance on existing structures.

Plus subscription plans have been the norm for business software for decades. This is really not anything new.

This is new. The subscriptions used to be a support contract. As I recall most of my support calls would be for problems on license management failing. I'll have people call me that some software stopped working and I'd have to call the company to find out what hoop I failed to jump through on keeping the software from contacting the license server. It used to be that the license was managed with a "dongle". If these companies stayed with those dongles then perhaps I would not have to call them so often.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Solandri]

There's a reason that the commercial software publishers (Adobe, Autodesk, etc.) are all going subscription based, hint, it's not because it's better for consumers. It's because it's much more lucrative for them

It may or may not be more lucrative. What driving the subscription model is predictability. It's the accounting department which is pushing these companies to adopt the subscription model. Their job is a lot easier if they know they have x subscribers paying $y per year, and they can model how much x will increase or decrease next year. Under the purchase model, they know they made $x from the release of last year's version, but have no clue how much they'll make from releasing next year's version.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[BenFranske]

Predictability is certainly part of it but I'm pretty convinced that it's more lucrative too. If you surveyed all users of software from these subscription purveyors I'm pretty sure you would find they are paying more (averaged on a per-year basis) than they were pre-subscription. Usually the subscription price is the same or just ever so slightly less than what buying every upgrade would cost you. In my experience while some people do buy every upgrade there are a larger number of users who traditionally only bought every second or third upgrade. While they may lose a few of these users there are many they are not losing and who are just paying more.

Of course the "predictability" argument is the only one you'll ever find evidence of and the only one these companies will ever say out loud because being vocally anti-consumer isn't usually good for business.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Bert64]

The model of selling software has a limited shelf life and the publishers all know this... There are very few compelling new features, previous versions do the job perfectly well and a lot of users want to stay with older versions. Newer versions introduce features users don't want, while also being more bloated and slower.

If users are subscribing to a service, then the vendors can stop new development almost entirely, and just perform occasional bugfixes. They would save a lot of money if they fired 90% of their dev staff.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[jwhyche]

Makes sense. Off hand I can't find any fault in your logic. I can't say that I completely agree with it, but its a good point.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[blindseer]

Makes sense. Off hand I can't find any fault in your logic. I can't say that I completely agree with it, but its a good point.

That's fair enough if you can't completely agree with it. I'm not sure I completely agree with my argument either. I would appreciate if someone offered a counter argument, just to see where I might be wrong.

I also thought of another aspect that bothers me about software subscriptions. If the files produced by this software is in a format that can only be read by software provided under this subscription then potentially someone might find their data held hostage. I don't know how Microsoft or other software publishers handle this but it can be a concern. The usual arrangement, in my experience, is that a free product can view these files, print them, but not allow edits or conversions to other formats. That might be enough for a lot of people but potentially crippling for someone else. Also, most any software will save in some widely supported file format but using the file format unique to the software means getting greater control on the file, or some other advantage. For someone that is mindful of their data potentially being held hostage can usually avoid this with little effort. Those that don't keep this in mind can find themselves in trouble.

I went through this a bit by talking about the software as information, in that failing to pay "rent" means losing the software. I'm pointing out that the product of the software tool is also information. If we think of software as a tool then failing to pay rent is like seeing your cupboards disappear because you failed to pay the rent on the table saw you used to make them. Or, perhaps, you can make the cupboards and still use them without paying rent but if you want to make any alterations later then you can only use their table saw to do so. I know the analogy breaks down quickly but that's just how analogies work.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[jwhyche]

It's good then. What you said makes a lot of sense, but there is still something nagging me that we are missing something. I have a feeling that it will be one of those things I will think of when I least expect it. Or not. :)

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Ash-Fox]

To be honest in the FOSS space, Krita has been a better candidate as an alternative to Photoshop rather than GIMP for over a decade... Why are you recommending GIMP?

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[dan_barrett]

They already do for bigger businesses, it's called "software assurance". Believe you me, if/when they could figure out how to force smaller business users into subscription Windows they will.

Dont worry, it's coming. You can now get "Microsoft 365" and Microsoft will be forcing companies to it by abandoning WSUS and system center. For instance, after beating my head against the wall for a while it turns out you can't upgrade Windows 10 to the fall update via WSUS - it just.. fails.

Want to keep using SCCM and WSUS? bad luck.
My guess is we'll soon see "sorry not supported on Windows 10. but for only $17 to $28 per month per seat, we can do it all for you on Azure."

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[neilo_1701D]

Makes sense. Off hand I can't find any fault in your logic. I can't say that I completely agree with it, but its a good point.

That's fair enough if you can't completely agree with it. I'm not sure I completely agree with my argument either. I would appreciate if someone offered a counter argument, just to see where I might be wrong.

If MS Office was completely unchanging, the subscription makes no sense. Why pay indefinitely for the same thing? But Office is evolving and getting better. With my annual subscription, I get two major refreshes a year - and it's cheaper than upgrading every two years. We tended to skip every other release, so our upgrade costs were't as often, but even then it's a break-even proposition.

So for my wife and I, we save money on the annual subscription, we see continual improvement, we get the cloud storage, and we get the $30/mth skype credits which we use (we live in the US, our parents are in Aus).

That's for us, though. Your mileage may vary.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[Ash-Fox]

I use these tools and Krita is functionally closer to Photoshop than GIMP.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[thegreatbob]

(BigCorp): And they said we couldn't squeeze blood from a turnip...

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[thegreatbob]

Software Assurance reads not unlike Comcast's recent "Service Protection Plan" nonsense...

"That's some nice softwares ya gots there... be a shame if something were to happen to it... ya know?"

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[thegreatbob]

I will suggest that Visual Studio 2017 averts the newer != better notion, at least from my experience coming up from 2015. Slightly heavier, yes, but Intellisense seems to be massively more responsive, and the setup program seemed to suck a lot less. Also haven't had it blow up in my face when trying to resume execution during a debug session... yet.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[thegreatbob]

At the same time, a lot of these services have no issue with cancelling the subscription for a few months when it isn't needed... doesn't fit everyone's workflows, but can be used to cut costs. Might be a non-starter if you use their cloud hosting services though.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[thegreatbob]

Been using it since v. 4.0, have always liked their stuff quite a lot. Haven't used it much since X3, but it still holds a place in my heart.

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[aaarrrgggh]

The $15k package is a single seat of specialized engineering software. Their annual licensing is about $5k per seat... for a package that has barely seen updates in 15 years.

My annual cost per person is based on a few packages everyone uses, plus a mix of more expensive things with 50% or fewer of staff members having simultaneous access. It is a challenge, because our industry group is typically considered low direct/indirect overhead. With $1k per person added cost, I need to recover about $5 per billable hour to cover it. As a percentage (or total amount), it might not seem like much, but that can become a material percentage of gross margin if you are not careful.

(And sadly, now that I am looking at my number, I realize it must exclude some software that is improperly categorized-- Bluebeam and our accounting per-seat licenses add another $500/person, and there is some software (over $15k total) that must have been charged directly to projects.)

Re:Subscriptions are going to kill my business..

[aaarrrgggh]

I actually had an AutoDesk tech support guy call me back because he was sorry for the bullshit answer he gave for my problem, and proceeded to give me the correct answer and a direct number for Tier 2 support if I had another problem, or needed assistance in configuring. I was shocked!

I complain about the costs, I complain about the unrealistic expectations they sell to our clients, and I complain about the bugs they have never fixed over the past 20-30 years, and I complain about the new things they try to do to realize past promises (unsuccessfully)... but I prefer their software to the alternatives.

Total BS

[omfglearntoplay]

I can't imagine business standing for this. I'm sure many would run Office 2016 for 10 years if they had to.

Re:Total BS

[Darinbob]

It's not like Office 2019 is going to have any useful new features. It'll probably be slower than Office 2016 also.

For perspective

[chispito]

Windows 7 reaches of end of life in 2020.

Re:For perspective

[thegreatbob]

To that end, my main windows machine is 8.1; good until 2023... even more time to wrangle some good alternatives.

Re:For perspective

[Merk42]

As that time approaches I await another wave of "No one (else) will upgrade to Windows ${latest}, they'll switch to Linux, you'll see!", just like in 2014 when XP went EOL, and there was no huge uptick in desktop Linux.

Re:For perspective

[StormReaver]

...just like in 2014 when XP went EOL, and there was no huge uptick in desktop Linux.

I agree. That just proved the Einstein quote to be correct.

Re:For perspective

[Darinbob]

Supported until 2023. It'll still be good for several years after that.

Re:For perspective

[toddestan]

I wouldn't count on it. Once software stops targeting Windows 7 as the minimum version, they'll probably just go right to Windows 10 as the minimum version completely skipping Windows 8.1. So in about 3-4 years when Windows 7 numbers [likely] really start to dwindle, more and more new software will stop running on Windows 8.1 too. Kind of like Vista, which was still under extended support until last year, but a lot of new stuff stopped supporting Vista before that once they had decided to kill off XP support.

And heck, the whole article is about Microsoft dropping support for Windows 7 and 8.1 at the same time for Office.

Re:For perspective

[Darinbob]

You don't need to buy new software versions every year either. And people stopped using Vista because it sucked badly. Windows 7 was a marked improvement. Windows 8 was a very minor improvement in comparison, and Windows 10 is a step backwards.

Good.

[MikeDataLink]

Part what's been killing Windows for decades is the bloat after bloat of compatibility layers that make it work with software all the way back to Windows 3.1 in some cases.

Re:Good.

[thegreatbob]

Matter of perspective, I guess... that seeming dedication (regardless of motive) to backwards compatibility is what has kept me from exiting their ecosystem entirely over the past 15 years. And yes, you can still install NTVDM on 32-bit Win 10, so win 3.x stuff can be made to work, as can many DOS applications.

Re:Good.

[b0s0z0ku]

Except that Office 2019 will work with earlier Windows versions, IF users are railroaded into the subscription model. It's not a technical limitation but an artificial one.

Re:Good.

[Darinbob]

Right, so pull out the windows 3.1 support. That makes sense. But Windows 7 is still highly popular, especially in the enterprise where Microsoft makes most of their money.

FU (again) Microsoft

[krray]

I have to run Windows. It was my choice -- accounting software. It is really the ONLY reason Windows is in the office anymore...

Sadly Word / Excel work better on Windows IMHO; too many keyboard shortcuts missing in Office for Mac...

I hate ribbons too. Won't use them.

So I prefer Office XP which runs just fine on Windows 7 which run just fine virtualized running as a process on a Mac server.

Windows has no business talking to the Internet (so it can't) which removes a whole bunch of security issues. I can run like this indefinitely. So ... fuck you Microsoft.

Re:FU (again) Microsoft

[DogDude]

You're saying "fuck you" to a company that made the software that you've been happily running for almost 20 years now? That's a really strange attitude to have. I'm pretty happy that Office runs so well that you can use the same code for decades. I don't have much other software from other manufacturers that works as well and as long as some Microsoft stuff does.

"Approximately 2 years of extended support"

[the_skywise]

plus or minus a year... or two...

Wow!

[Major_Disorder]

If you ever wanted a road map to alienate all your customers Microsoft has provided it.
Personally, I gave up on them years ago, but if they keep going the way they have been, they will start driving mainstream users away. Is it any wonder the home PC market is nearly dead already.

Re:Wow!

[Bert64]

Because a PC is a complex tool designed for geeks.. Most people have never wanted such a tool, they wanted to access the internet and there was no other option. They don't want to deal with applying updates, installing software, worrying about viruses or other maintenance.

Now there are better options for accessing the internet like phones and tablets, so increasing numbers of people are using only these devices. I know many people who have never owned a PC and have no intention to buy one, but they post on facebook every day.

Re:Wow!

[toddestan]

Actually, the iPad and Android tablet markets are taking a beating too. More and more people are just using a smartphone (mostly Android, but also iPhone) to access the internet at home.

Personally I don't understand it, as accessing the internet through a small screen on a touch device through crippled mobile apps really kind of sucks compared to a full blown PC, but that's what people seem to like.

Or push to Windows 10?

[drunken_boxer777]

Why is the conclusion: "It's a move that's clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions"? They can upgrade to Windows 10 and get Office 2019. (Or do nothing, or migrate to some other platform/software, etc.) Microsoft has clearly done everything they can to push users to Windows 10 (automatic updates, anyone?), so why is that not considered? They seem hellbent on making Windows 10 "the most popular Windows ever".

Re:Or push to Windows 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

They seem hellbent on making Windows 10 "the most popular Windows ever".

Because when support ends for Windows 7, Windows 10 will become subscription software.

Genunine curiosity.

[OpenSourced]

I use Office only only rarely, but would like to ask to heavier users... I remember 2K as being a clear improvement over 97. Then you got 2003 that was similar to 2000 so no reason to upgrade. Then 2007 that had the dreaded ribbon and was file-incompatible so you more or less had to upgrade to open the incompatible files every moron that just couldn't be in a release that wasn't the last one sent you. Then 2010?, perhaps, 2013, I'm pretty sure that exists, probably others, then 365, one release to end all releases and in the darkness bind all users. As I read what I wrote I'm starting to think that they will change again the file format for Office 2019, just in case...

So the question to power users is: Has been any reason, i mean feature-wise, to upgrade Office since Office 2000 ?

Re:Genunine curiosity.

[thegreatbob]

(recollection of the distant past) While slightly a hassle, it was not particularly difficult to install the filters for the older versions. Agree on all points though. I still retain o2000/XP for when I need it.

Re:Genunine curiosity.

[vux984]

Yeah; outlook 2016 is a big improvement over older versions... even 2013. And its an order of magnitude better than 2000. Its a lot more reliable. Its solid. And honestly it doesn't have much competition. Thunderbird is good... but IMAP is really limited compared to exchange/office365.

So for a lot of people the business case for office is simply exchange support. And for them Word and excel and powerpoint are really just along for the ride.

Beyond outlook/exchange, 64-bit support lets you deal with much bigger spreadsheets which can be a boon for accountants and some others.

There's plenty of other stuff, much of which is just incremental, some of which is a big deal for some niche or other.

For myself, I wouldnt go back to 2000/XP/2003/2007. 2010/2013 are ok but 2016 is better.

That said, if you don't NEED office and don't use exchange/office365 email then LibreOffice is pretty solid too, for a lot of use cases; and if office 365 didn't come with 5 installs, and my kids didn't get it free through their school... then I use libreoffice at lot more than i actually do.

Re:Genunine curiosity.

[denbesten]

There are a few features I love as a business user:

1. 1) Multi-user editing. When stored on certain kinds of storage (notably, sharepoint), it is possible for two different people to open one document simultaneously for editing and to see the changes the other person is making.
2. 2) Change Tracking, When turned on, anything I type is hilighted with "my" color and is tagged with my name. The original author can then review everyone's changes and either "approve" or "reject" them.
3. 3) Hidden text lets me get rid of things I think I no longer need, but might want back.
4. 4) The spell checker now gives definitions for words and the grammar checker now explains why it feels the grammar could be improved. You can also right-click on a word to see synonyms.
5. 5) The O365 "Business" versions allow installation on 5 PCs per user. The company pays for my work copy and I can perfectly legally install and use it on my home PC.

I have found my peace with the ribbon. It helps that you can collapse it when you need more screen space. It then behaves more like a menu --- you click the title and then an item. It does its stuff and then goes away.

Re:Genunine curiosity.

[jwhyche]

So the question to power users is: Has been any reason, i mean feature-wise, to upgrade Office since Office 2000 ?

If you are going to upgrade look at going to office 365, or 2016 if you don't want to go subscriptions. If you have office 2010, moving to 2013/2016 will get you some new feature but nothing really worth upgrading to in my option. The only reason I moved from 2013 to 2016 is because i subscribed to office 365, which is office 2016. But I used office 2013 at work and on my surface and I really don't notice much difference between it and 2016. If you have 2013 you are perfectly fine to stay there.

Why Upgrade?

[Tempest_2084]

I'm still using Office 2013 and my wife is using 2010 and they both work just fine. In fact the newer versions (such as 2016 we use at work) have more bloated crap glued to the already cluttered interface. Is there anything in these newer versions that makes for a compelling reason to update?

Re:Why Upgrade?

[Kenja]

Because at some point, you will be given an Office 2019 file, and you're version will barf all over it. Or you can switch to Open Office or something...

Re:Why Upgrade?

[jwhyche]

Because at some point, you will be given an Office 2019 file,

Which probably won't happen. I routinely work with 3 office versions, 2010, 2013, and 2016 and I have yet to see any compatibility versions between the 3 of them as for opening files. Granted, I don't use any really 2016 specific options.

As for the OP bitch, this will happen with any software. Even libreoffice eventually. At some point a new feature will be added to the suite that isn't compatible with older versions. So the OP point is pretty much a moot point.

An a interesting note I found a directory full of short stories I wrote on an Amiga 500 using wordperfect 4.2 back around 1992. Word 2016 opened all of them with out issues.

Re:Why Upgrade?

[DogDude]

Because at some point, you will be given an Office 2019 file, and you're version will barf all over it.

Not likely. Microsoft provides all kinds of free converters. We can open modern documents in Office 2003, in fact.

Re:Why Upgrade?

[Mike Van Pelt]

Because at some point, you will be given an Office 2019 file, and you're version will barf all over it.
  Not likely. Microsoft provides all kinds of free converters. We can open modern documents in Office 2003, in fact.

So, they gave up on the "Every new version of Office creates documents that no previous version of Office can even recognize as an Office document at all" thing, then?

That's one of the main things that pushed me to Star/Open/Libre Office way back when. Maybe it's not currently a problem... But I'm happy enough with LibreOffice that I don't have any real incentive to switch, even if Microsoft were to release Offices as RMS-pure FLOSS.

Re:Why Upgrade?

[Ash-Fox]

more bloated crap glued to the already cluttered interface

Like what?

You'll truly be missed

[TheOuterLinux]

...Just kidding. You know they're only doing that to keep gov offices from switching to Linux and make those idiotic enough to switch back to Windows to have to upgrade. LibreOffice is your friend.

How about Windows 11?

[jfdavis668]

Will it work on Windows 11? I hear it's 1 louder.

Re:How about Windows 11?

[Major_Disorder]

Windows 11, for when you need that extra push over the cliff.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Fine by me

[DogDude]

That's fine by me. We're still using Office 2003. Works fine.

Re:Fuck Windows 10

[thegreatbob]

De facto? I think it goes well beyond a general consensus...

As an academic writer

[blind biker]

I use rather advanced features in Microsoft Word (and sometimes Excel), and Word 2007 is still perfectly suitable for all the publications I produce.

Re:As an academic writer

[Ash-Fox]

Out of curiosity, why doesn't Google Docs fulfill that better? I would have thought the revision control, backup, seamless online-offline operation, multi-user and historical feature set would be a bigger improvement. Especially when it's free.

You should have helped LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

If only people contributed to LibreOffice and Linux instead of giving billions to Microsoft you wouldn't be In the Windows 10 Monoculture. You have two years before Windows 7 expires, use that to plan your escape route.

so 2019 365 will work in windows or will be 2016SP

[Joe_Dragon]

so 2019 365 will work in windows or will be some like 2016 SP X fully works with 2019 (that is 365 only)

Re:Fuck Windows 10

[Anne Thwacks]

will do everything that 99% of users need

or, if you are using an Intel processor, everything that 171.68213% of users need.

Go for freedom...

[PaoloAgati]

LibreOffice 6 has just been released...

Doesn't matter to me...

[QuietLagoon]

LibreOffice runs on all the operating systems I use. Even the OS's I choose to use because Windows 10's aggressive data harvesting is chasing me away from Windows.

Re: Switch to Libreoffice - V6 is Out - It's Free

[Ken_g6]

And here's the link to give them your money.

You can take my Windows 7

[jediborg]

From my cold dead hands

So what?

[kenh]

Windows 10 was released mid-2015, office 2019 will ship almost 4 years later, and of course Office 2016 and Office 2013 as well as Office 2010 will all work on several well-deprecated OSes when Office 2019 is released.

I am certain that Apple's latest version of Pages, iMovie, etc. all run perfectly fine and are supported on 4 year-old OS X releases... right?

Will the latest OS X even install on a 4 year-old Mac?

Re:So what?

[blindseer]

Yes, the latest macOS will install on a 4 year old Mac. It will install on an 8 year old Mac.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Apple provides updated operating systems for free. If you are concerned about running the latest Apple software on a 4 year old OS then you've simply failed to take advantage of the free updates. Or perhaps your computer is now 15 years old.

There's nothing wrong with using an "old" computer, IMHO. In fact the computer I'm typing on right now is about 10 years old. I also have the expectation that Apple will stop providing support for it, if they haven't already. I'm also not paying rent for any of the software on it to work.

I like my Apple so much that I just bought a new one, and that's the third one I've bought new with my own money. I paid a lot of money for it up front and I expect it to work for me for 10 years too. Maybe paying rent for software works for some people but I like not having to pay rent to use my own computer.

Also on my desk is an old computer running Windows XP. It comes in handy for running some old software I like. I'm not sure how old it is because I'm at least the third owner. You can laugh about not being able to run the latest and greatest software but I'm not paying rent. That old XP machine still does the same things it did when it was new. When you stop paying rent what do you have? Or when the rent collectors decide your computer is "too old"? A paperweight?

Who says Engulf and Devour

[AutodidactLabrat]

...is dead?
Not while there is a dollar to seize from computer users

I have Office 2007 ...

[CaptainDork]

... using the same old install CD on 9 computers.

All of the shit, Excel, Access, Word, Power Point, and Outlook work just great on XP, 7, 8.1 and 10.

Re:Whatever

[cayenne8]

Hmm....large entity and we're at MS Office 2010....I don't see us moving from that and Win 7 for quite a long time to come.

No real reason to at this point....

Microsoft == Miscreant-o-soft

[Rick Schumann]

Scumbags.

Of course there's open-source alternatives like Libre Office and Open Office, aren't there?

Also, I'll bet cash money that someone comes up with a hack or some sort of 'shim' or 'wrapper' that will allow it to install under Windows 7/8/8.1.

Re:Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Google docs has some advantages but overall is imperfect. For home use I see nothing wrong with LibreOffice. I think the dominance of MS Office is nearly over. If I still ran a small office I might even be able to use LibreOffice these days.

ZIP

Re:Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Each successive version of every piece of Microsoft software becomes more and more useless. I don't see any point in upgrading, ever.

Re:Fuck Windows 10

[jwhyche]

Seriously, FUCK Windows 10.

Oh the butthurt is strong in this one. Good good.

Seriously, all you people that don't run windows and only use libreoffice. Why do you even give a shit about office pricing or weather it will run on windows 7, 8 or what ever?

I am not paying ransom to use MS Office

[sandbagger]

I need my data, my spreadsheets and documents. I don't want them held ransom or have access cut off to them because ever-reliable Microsoft botches something.

Re: Whatever

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So from a business continuity point of view, the new versions of Windows, Office and Exchange are all now broken due to unwanted updates and/or incompatibilities?

Sounds like we escaped the Microsoft trap just in time...

Translation

[Trogre]

Our shareholders aren't happy that we're haemorrhaging market share so let's make our subscription based cloud offering look more attractive.

word sucks

[speedlaw]

I draft everything in Pages, but are stuck exporting to word for the "rest of the world". Word is so caught up in multiple functions for huge groups collaborating (or whatever the fuck big companies do) that it sucks for basic word-smithery.

Who cares?

[iamacat]

Dead tree publishing is a vanishing use case. Both people who still need it can upgrade to Windows 10, or try Libreoffice. Tools for modern collaboration and online/social publishing are generally web based, free and accessible from any laptop or mobile device. A better question is how does Microsoft even get a return on investment to keep developing Office at this point.

Re: Fuck Windows 10

[ZosX]

Your troll fu is weak.

Windows 8.1 Though?

[Voyager529]

Look, I'm on board with everyone else who believes that Win7 was the last truly good release of Windows. Similarly, I can understand Microsoft not supporting an OS that's going to have less than a year left of extended support upon release day. Not in favor of it, mind you, but it at least makes sense.

Windows 8.1's extended support is in effect until 2023, by which point there will be another Office waterfall release (unless it's subscription-only by that point). Not supporting an OS whose lifecycle indicates the existence of support in excess of the three year Office release cadence is far different than not supporting Win7; even Office 2010 ran on XP even though XP had less time left than 8.1 will have after the 2019 release. It's clear that this is adoption pressure rather than support pragmatism.

When contrasted with Windows 10's biggest gripes, 8.1 isn't that bad in comparison. Sure, the Start screen sucks and the 'charms' menu is stupid, but Classic Shell fixes both of those things effectively and permanently. The Pro version of Win 8.1 ships with full-blown Hyper-V, Edge doesn't constantly hijack PDF associations, Store apps don't randomly download without permission or intent, and it's possible to control update reboots and decline said updates entirely. The new task manager is helpful, Cortana is thankfully absent, and pretty much all of the appy-apps are removable. I hate to say it, but I'm keeping my Win8.1 key around depending on how bad Win10 gets (and it's almost there for me, held back only by W10 Privacy and a few other similar utilities).

Really, the big question is what new features MS is going to be adding to 2019 over 2016 that makes it genuinely worthwhile. Basically the only features that seem to have gotten improvement have been the ones involving Office365 integration, with everything else remaining more or less stagnant for some time. If they're going to use Office 2019 as leverage to pressure the Win7/Win8 people, it's going to have to have something pretty spectacular. Office has been mature since 2003 (though there have been a handful of useful improvements in Excel and Outlook in 2007 and 2010), LibreOffice has made solid improvements to the point where it's basically just lacking the Office ecosystem and a mail client, and G-Suite is quickly becoming the preferred browser-based office suite for the 'good enough' crowd and its massive base in education is not improving MS's standing. Office is no longer the undisputed productivity suite it once was.

An "only works on an OS we're not going to" is a sales pitch that may well encourage users to skip, or finally look for alternatives. Then again, the real question is when Nadella is going to be either bold or desperate enough to turn Windows into a subscription service.

Re: Whatever

[jezwel]

So from a business continuity point of view, the new versions of Windows, Office and Exchange are all now broken due to unwanted updates and/or incompatibilities?

Sounds like we escaped the Microsoft trap just in time...

Depends on your Microsoft + or - point of view. WinServer 2016, SCCM, Win10 & O365 users subscriptions + Exchange online, Power BI Pro, Dynamics, I don't know what else. Keep 'em all fairly close to the latest release and it all seems to work together OK.
Don't keep updated on both Windows & Office and things start breaking everywhere.

At what point can you stop updating though? Win7/8 + O2013 & WinServer 2012R2 + on-prem Exchange, that seems about it?

Re: Fuck Windows 10

[jwhyche]

Your troll fu is weak.

To which you have my apologies. My troll fu has been weak all week scoring mostly overrateds. I will correct this, but for now I will be back under my bridge.

yeah: Whatever

[harvey the nerd]

If you're not a serious publisher or corp type, Office 97 or OO or LibreOffice will do the job

That is great news!

[Darkness Of Course]

I'm on W7

Re: Whatever

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Your second paragraph is pretty much what they went for at one of the places I worked. Subscriptions are inherently risky for essential business software, partly because of the obvious lock-in effect and partly because of the potential for a product to be discontinued or otherwise modified in undesired ways without there being much if anything the business can do about it. For example, it's not hard to imagine an alternative version of today's story where customers using Win7 but O365 found that the latest O365 updates required Win10 to continue running and older versions of O365 would no longer work.

Even if you're an enterprise-level customer and maybe don't have the same reservations about Win10 as smaller businesses or individuals, you don't necessarily want your hand to be forced in terms of when you roll out updates to other important software just to avoid breaking dependencies, and that's what this new world of subscription-everything threatens.

Re:Whatever

[thegarbz]

Hmm....large entity and we're at MS Office 2010....I don't see us moving from that and Win 7 for quite a long time to come.
No real reason to at this point....

What is the reason not to? If you're a large entity then you're likely paying MS a fixed fee anyway regardless of what versions of OSes or Applications are installed.

By the way extended support for Windows 7 ends in two years. If you're as large as you're implying with your post you're either already assessing and planning the move to Windows 10 or you're playing with fire. If you're already doing a major system change I'll bet that a revised office suite is part of that as it is typical to not roll out a new office suite unless you do a major system change in large organisations.

Mind you that will likely land you on Office 2016.

Re:Whatever

[lsatenstein]

Hmm....large entity and we're at MS Office 2010....I don't see us moving from that and Win 7 for quite a long time to come.

No real reason to at this point....

There are several other software (wps.com) that is MS compatible, as well as the open source LibreOffice 6 version. I am mentioning the commercial products that work with Windows and with Linux.

Re: Fuck Windows 10

[ZosX]

Haha that was intended for the AC trolling you! ;)

Wow! A 4 digit UID! Rare! :)