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Microsoft Is Readying a Consumer Microsoft 365 Subscription Bundle (zdnet.com)
Microsoft is working on a new "Microsoft 365 Consumer" bundle that "will be the consumer-focused complement to Microsoft's existing Microsoft 365 subscription bundle for business users," reports ZDNet. From the report: A couple of recent Microsoft job postings mention the consumer subscription bundle, which Microsoft has yet to announce publicly. One job posting for a Product Manager for the "M365 Consumer Subscription" notes: "The Subscription Product Marketing team is a new team being created to build and scale the Microsoft 365 Consumer Subscription." The job description says the product manager for this service will help "identify, build, position and market a great new Microsoft 365 Consumer Subscription."
The job post notes that the team behind Microsoft 365 Consumer oversees the Windows platform, the Microsoft Surface device portfolio, Office 365 consumer plans, Skype, Cortana, Bing search, as well as the Microsoft Education team. If I were betting on what Microsoft 365 Consumer might include, I'd think some variant of Windows 10, Office 365 Home, Skype, Cortana, Bing, Outlook Mobile, Microsoft To-Do and maybe MSN apps and services could figure into the picture. Maybe this subscription will be tied to Surface devices only? Maybe a monthly leasing fee for Surfaces will be part of the bundle itself?
The job post notes that the team behind Microsoft 365 Consumer oversees the Windows platform, the Microsoft Surface device portfolio, Office 365 consumer plans, Skype, Cortana, Bing search, as well as the Microsoft Education team. If I were betting on what Microsoft 365 Consumer might include, I'd think some variant of Windows 10, Office 365 Home, Skype, Cortana, Bing, Outlook Mobile, Microsoft To-Do and maybe MSN apps and services could figure into the picture. Maybe this subscription will be tied to Surface devices only? Maybe a monthly leasing fee for Surfaces will be part of the bundle itself?
Corporations REALLY want to move everyone to a monthly rental model in order to satisfy their CFOs need for predictable quarterly income. This is really the end of personal computing since it will all be tied to the cloud and the Internet. Eventually ISPs will require your device to be one of the approved rental model systems in order to connect to the Internet at all.
Computer users a cheap, really fucking cheap. There will always be a class of people who will go with rent-seeking ideas like this but it will be short lived. The majority of people will switch to something free (may be pirated MS Office or LibreOffice) because money is money. They are going to end up cutting ties with most users to profit from the few that go along with it. The few that go along is an eroding base because MS Office will soon no longer be the dominate office suite that everyone knows.
The only way this works is if the product is free for the user and they subject you to ads and steal your personal info even more and even then you have to compete with google's office suite.
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Microsoft365 is just WIndows + Office 365 together. If you don't want to pay for a subscription then don't.
Some users don't care about computers and just need to run spreadsheets for work and have their kids run book reports and do their taxes etc. Office 365 is like $60 a year for 4 devices.
I used to think it was a good value with Skydrive which is now OneDrive but since the cost of 1 TB hard drives are cheap maybe not so much. So far Office is still top notch as LibreOffice is amature.
http://saveie6.com/