Only Plebs Use Office 2019 over Office 365, Says Microsoft's Weird New Ad Campaign

[Megalith]

Microsoft, which would prefer its customers pay for Office perpetually, has introduced a series of videos starring twins to convince users Office 2019 should be dismissed for Office 365. The incentive advertised is predictable: Microsoft stresses the latter is regularly improved with the latest features unlike the non-subscription product, which will always be some steps behind. Office 365 Home/Personal is $99.99/$69.99/yr., while Office Home & Student/Home & Business 2019 is $149.99/$249.99.

The twins are tasked with activities designed to show off the tweaks the subscription-based product has had over the months, such as listing US state capitals. Intriguingly, Microsoft did not think to challenge the participants to work out how to switch off data collection. Nor did it suggest a compare-and-contrast on uptime. The twins were also not set the task of working out which would be cheaper over a period of time.

 

[Advil]

I quit recommending MS Office to end users a couple of years ago. The entire software suite is an absolute nightmare. There's a dozen ways to buy it or subscribe to it. I can't help people install it unless they log me into their MS account and it's so unintuitive on both setup and use the average person hasn't got a clue how to buy it let alone use it.

Not to mention the thousand features no one outside a corporate enterprise environment cares about.

Maybe my age is showing, but it's getting hard to even tell just what MS Office IS anymore.

 

[RogueKitsune]

Only plebs use either of them.

Google Docs is good enough for most people out there, for those that need more there is always Libre/Open Office. The only users that "need" MS Office are those that must use it because of company/enterprise restrictions.

 

[DKS]

Um... no. I have a problem with paying in perpetuity. So does my accountant at tax time. Yes, I will buy Office 2019 simply because the rest of the world insists on a poor product. Me? You will pry WordPerfect from my cold, dead hands following my keyboard failure.

 

[JargonGR]

I personally find it a great deal to have 6 installations of Office 365 + 6TB OneDrive + The mobile apps for the whole family at only $99....

I guess some people will still nag even if Microsoft gives Office 365 away fro free....well there is a free online version anyway....

I still wonder how people use any of Google Products - I personally find them a mess but that is my opinion...

 

[M76]

Yeah, no. Staying the same is not just an advantage but abosulte necessity for productivity. When I want to do something I usually want to do it quick, and not have to jump trough 5 additional hoops they added as "improvement" since I last did a task.

 

[Oldmodder]

This kind of commercial works extra negative on me.

 

[Cyraxx]

I find the concept of paying for an established piece of software that hasn't had fundamental changes (because their usage has been the same) in over 20 years to be laughable.

 

[Hallucinator]

That's like paying for a cable modem on lease from the cable company when you can buy one for your own use....


PASS.

 

[brogers]

I personally find it a great deal to have 6 installations of Office 365 + 6TB OneDrive + The mobile apps for the whole family at only $99....

I guess some people will still nag even if Microsoft gives Office 365 away fro free....well there is a free online version anyway....

I still wonder how people use any of Google Products - I personally find them a mess but that is my opinion...

Same here, love this family package. Periodically I've seen deals for $60/year, you can buy those and add 1 year to your subscription. I'm good for another couple years.

 

[DukenukemX]

Now lets try this without an internet connection.

 

[ComputerBox34]

Now lets try this without an internet connection.

Internet at this point in time is just as a vital of a utility as electricity is.

If internet goes down in any office environment that I know of, people go and work from home.

I guess it's downside for those who live off the grid in the boonies and drink their own piss but I doubt using Office is a priority for them.

In any case - if I were starting up a business today, I'd probably go all in with Google over MS. Even in my environment of almost 1000 users, more and more people (and execs) are demanding GDocs, Drive, and GMail to be corporate standards. Makes me happy not to be anywhere involved with help desk or systems engineering thinking about the headache around that migration.

 

[DukenukemX]

Internet at this point in time is just as a vital of a utility as electricity is.

If internet goes down in any office environment that I know of, people go and work from home.

I guess it's downside for those who live off the grid in the boonies and drink their own piss but I doubt using Office is a priority for them.

In any case - if I were starting up a business today, I'd probably go all in with Google over MS. Even in my environment of almost 1000 users, more and more people (and execs) are demanding GDocs, Drive, and GMail to be corporate standards. Makes me happy not to be anywhere involved with help desk or systems engineering thinking about the headache around that migration.

That's interesting and all but when the internet does go down (and it will) then Office 2019 is better. When you're in the car or bus doing last minute work, Office 2019 is better. The only reason to use Office 365 is to get the monthly subscription fee. Been such a horrible failure that Microsoft had to make a commercial to denounce their own product. Nobody wants a subscription fee for something that doesn't need it.

 

[DNMock]

meh, my copy of MS Office 2007 I pirated a decade ago still works like a champ.

 

[Kor]

I'll keep using my partner program $20 local licenses thanks.

 

[tetris42]

We get it Microsoft, you want us to pay you each month or year, forever. That's all this is.

 

[ComputerBox34]

That's interesting and all but when the internet does go down (and it will) then Office 2019 is better. When you're in the car or bus doing last minute work, Office 2019 is better. The only reason to use Office 365 is to get the monthly subscription fee. Been such a horrible failure that Microsoft had to make a commercial to denounce their own product. Nobody wants a subscription fee for something that doesn't need it.

Every medium enterprise + small business that I've done business with over the past 5 years or so has gone 100% office 365 with the exception of the Google Apps shops. The savings over paying an external exchange provider plus individually buying office licenses for every employee is huge. It's really just the large enterprises that must "control all the things" that Office 2019 caters too, hence these ads.

 

[clockdogg]

How unfortunate for M$ they don't own Office 2019 and must compete against the obviously superior data-mining solution of Microsoft's Office 365.

/s

 

[Tak Ne]

I love how tech companies are trying to solve product stagnation by trying to get users to switch to a subscription model. Operating systems, office suites, printers, phones.. its all the same.
Even games companies are doing it (FIFA, NBA, NHL, AssCreed, BF/CoD) in a way. When they cant force a product to fail after a few years they'll try anything to squeeze money out of customers
for minimal incremental updates.

 

[naib]

Ill just leave this here

https://www.zdnet.com/article/office-365-hit-by-outage-some-users-unable-to-log-in/
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/fix-stuck-login-office-365
https://outage.report/office-365

I recently trialled O365 for work and besides the webclient being gimped compared to the desktop client, the major issue was actually network... Be it poor corporate infra of fscking MS end.

Cloud is all well and good BUT Microsoft, remember what kicked started your existence... Local machines instead of mainframes, you are just recreating the problems of the 60's that you went to fix

 

[1_rick]

Office, the kind you buy and install locally, has things like mail merge and other things, driven by good old COM interop. If you don't need to produce a spreadsheet from your app, or do a mail merge, you can get by with any of the other office products, including the non-Microsoft ones, probably. If you need that functionality, though, your choices narrow down. Office 365 doesn't offer interop.

 

[Galvin]

I'd rather see MS and Google compete against each other. Cause if everyone goes google, then its the same problem different company

 

[oldmanbal]

too bad the original office suite is still as productive as anything since released decades later.

 

[potency]

Only plebs use either of them.

Google Docs is good enough for most people out there, for those that need more there is always Libre/Open Office. The only users that "need" MS Office are those that must use it because of company/enterprise restrictions.

Outlook/Exchange still stands alone when it comes to doing a lot more than just sending/receiving email. Also there is no alternative to MS Access.

What's funny though is that MS is still thinks they are Apple and can 'command' their users to switch to something just because they say so. They need to ditch that marketing tactic once and for all, they're not good at it.

 

[ChadD]

MS charging for what everyone else does better for free. Makes sense.

 

[nutzo]

As a developer, Microsoft gives us enough licenses for internal usage to use either version of office.
I find it much simpler to use the local version, currently 2016, and moving to 2019 as soon as I finish testing.

 

[TwiceOver]

Honestly it's one of my best Monthly/Annual bills, both home and work. But to each their own. People should be crying more over Adobe Acrobat. $17/user/mo for $400+ one time. What a joke of software that is.

 

[DukenukemX]

Every medium enterprise + small business that I've done business with over the past 5 years or so has gone 100% office 365 with the exception of the Google Apps shops.

Sucks to be those guys.

The savings over paying an external exchange provider plus individually buying office licenses for every employee is huge. It's really just the large enterprises that must "control all the things" that Office 2019 caters too, hence these ads.

I'm sure that translates well with Suse and sally in that commercial. If they wanted to pitch this to enterprises then couldn't they do this better without using none business related people? I switch between Libre Office and MS Office 2007, though I use Libre mostly today. I have no need for a monthly subscription to run Office products. If I were going to college and needed it cause the school is married to MS products then a one time purchase makes sense. If it's not cheap then I'd pirate it cause I'm not in some sort of business.

 

[ecuador]

This is some weird universe when a company has an ad campaign that trashes one of their own current products...
Yeah, I understand they only have Office 2019 because non-braindead users ask for it and they'd REALLY prefer to rent their cloudy product, but still...

 

[thund3rb1rdDeuce]

I find it interesting that no one has yet to bring up that hosting your own exchange and using stand alone office keeps a businesses emails out of the eyes of anyone else.

 

[glutto]

Rent-seeking.

 

[Ranulfo]

Good Lord the stupid. This ad beats out that blind test of Vista commercial MS did years ago to push back against Vista hate.

 

[umeng2002]

I use Libre Office instead of cracking Office.

 

[taz-nz]

That's interesting and all but when the internet does go down (and it will) then Office 2019 is better. When you're in the car or bus doing last minute work, Office 2019 is better. The only reason to use Office 365 is to get the monthly subscription fee. Been such a horrible failure that Microsoft had to make a commercial to denounce their own product. Nobody wants a subscription fee for something that doesn't need it.

Office 365 doesn't need any internet connection to work, you confusion the free online versions or Work, Excel, etc with the Office 365 subscription , Office 365 subscription will run for 30 days from the last time it was able to confirm activation, which it does anytime there is a internet connection available. If you haven't had an internet connection for 30 days your business probably has bigger problems than being able to edit a Word doc in your car.

 

[GSDragoon]

I just use the free Office online and mobile versions. Works perfectly fine for what I need.

 

[odditory]

Only plebs use either of them.

Google Docs is good enough for most people out there, for those that need more there is always Libre/Open Office. The only users that "need" MS Office are those that must use it because of company/enterprise restrictions.

I gotta say, I have really taken to Google Sheets recently, and find it more intuitive for my needs. I used Sheets and Excel 365 side-by-side last past months, and found myself drifting to Sheets slowly, because quality-of-life features just stacked up there, I can do everything faster.

Just wish they made a local executable version and that loading/saving local files required less steps, but I realize its design choice because they want people attached to the web/cloud umbilical.

 

[Commander Shepard]

Easy to find very deep discounts on full downloads of Office 2019.

Paying monthly subscriptions for Office 365 is for morons.

I use Libre Office on my laptop. It's surprisingly good.

 

[odditory]

That's interesting and all but when the internet does go down (and it will) then Office 2019 is better. When you're in the car or bus doing last minute work, Office 2019 is better. The only reason to use Office 365 is to get the monthly subscription fee. Been such a horrible failure that Microsoft had to make a commercial to denounce their own product. Nobody wants a subscription fee for something that doesn't need it.

I had assumed I'd be SOL with GDocs if internet went down, but turns out its offline mode works pretty well and seamlessly. I'll admit there's that slight amount of "web latency" when working in google docs, even with a fast internet connection and fast PC, and a local executable of Excel is a bit snappier.

And with a GSuite subscription (I think its like $4/month for me) the data isn't scraped like the free version.

 

[Burticus]

I would still be using Office 2003 if it would install on Win 10. I don't think many of the "innovations" of the past 10+ versions change any core functionality of Word or Excel, which is all I care about.

The company I used to work for was in the HUP program where I could buy Office for "personal use" for $10-20 (started at $10 and creeped up). I'm still using 2010 from one of the last keys I had from that. For other systems, I hit the FS/FT thread and throw one of those guys $15-20.

MS just changes office just for change's sake. new version!!! but only the menus and command bars change.

I want to like Google docs, but it's pretty basic. It's fine, but if you have stuff that was custom tailored using Office it doesn't always import right. My mom cries about this all the time.

I would love love love for a 3rd party nobody company to come out with a word/excel/powerpoint suite that actually worked for like $20 and isn't java based or browser based. (so don't say "libre" or "google docs" or etc etc)

 

[coynatha]

To those arguing "if the internet goes down.."

If the internet goes down I've probably got much bigger things to worry about than whether my install of MS Office is functioning.

Like, WHERE DID thee bomb drop.