Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Really Doesn't Want You To Buy Office 2019 (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft today launched a marketing campaign pitting Office 2019 and Office 365 against each other. The goal? To prove Office 2019 isn't worth buying -- you and your company should go with Office 365 instead. In a series of three videos, twins Jeremy and Nathan calculate the differences in Excel, Cynni and Tanny present their findings in PowerPoint, while Scott and Sean type it out in Word. The ads are cringe-worthy, to say the least, but they do get the point across.
When Microsoft announced Office 2019 in September 2017, the company said the productivity suite was "for customers who aren't yet ready for the cloud." And when Microsoft launched Office 2019 in September 2018, the company promised it wouldn't be the last: "We're committed to another on-premises release in the future." And yet, Microsoft would much rather you join the ranks of Office 365's 33.3 million subscribers. If you must, Office 2019 is available for purchase. But Office 365 is really what the company wants you to buy.
When Microsoft announced Office 2019 in September 2017, the company said the productivity suite was "for customers who aren't yet ready for the cloud." And when Microsoft launched Office 2019 in September 2018, the company promised it wouldn't be the last: "We're committed to another on-premises release in the future." And yet, Microsoft would much rather you join the ranks of Office 365's 33.3 million subscribers. If you must, Office 2019 is available for purchase. But Office 365 is really what the company wants you to buy.
I will then not give you any money, for there is no way in hell I am going to pay you a recurrent subscription.
actually neither are worth buying for probably higher than 90% of people.........libreoffice all the way
If a customer BUYS your software, then you get paid once but you still have to support it for years.
If the customer RENTS your software, Software-As-A-Service, you get them to keep paying you annually or even monthly.
Kind of a no-brainer for Microsoft, really. An owned copy of the software costs what, $200-$250? They keep you subscribed for two and a half years and that's covered. Relatively few people will BUY new software every year when the old versions work just fine, so you absolutely make more in the long run through subscriptions.
=Smidge=
"But Office 365 is really what the company wants you to buy."
Buy? They don't want you to buy anything, they want you to rent it.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The side effect for the company. Other then just printing millions of CD's for you app and selling them for a hundreds of dollars. You now need to maintain a full data-center to handle the data for millions of customers.
Cloud is good when you need to share across networks. Or you are a small organization who just doesn't have a secure infrastructure. But for others having software that you can buy and keep updated (or not) yourself is useful. There isn't too many features past office 97 that I really need. Why can't I use office 97 for work.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No one should want it, but Microsoft's marketing budget is at least 10 times their programming budget at this point.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Don't need the latest MS Office features? No problem, Microsoft has a solution for that. Constant format changes (which you have to track if you want files that other MS Office users send you to open properly) will make sure you 'll have to buy the newest MS Office version. Or subscribe to Office 365 when "buy" is not an option anymore. Good luck convincing your boss or your professor how he should change Office suites or how he should not use the latest version of the Office suite (or that he should risk document mangling by using an older format version). The tactic is called "planned obsolescence by use of network effects" btw...
The really stupid thing is that unless you're collaborating with someone on a document, you shouldn't be exchanging Word of Excel or Powerpoint documents. Those programs are for creating the document. Once it's created, you're supposed to print it out (to paper or a PDF) and distribute that to the people you want reading it. Emailing people the .doc file is like sending the source code to someone who only needs a copy of the executable, then telling them they need to buy a copy of the latest compiler to convert the source code into the file that they really need.