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

DukenukemX said:
Now lets try this without an internet connection.
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Honestly haven't lost internet connection in 3 years at home, that was when I switched away from comcast lol. Even if I did I have hotspot usage. This statement was probably true 10 years ago though or you must have comcast lol.

Also here is the kicker you do get to install it on desktop as well its not just online.
 
ComputerBox34 said:
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.
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That’s basically where I am with my 600 or so users, we have the majority 480ish using Google docs and it’s fine for them but we still have that synchronized through AD using the O365 A1 license (it’s free), the core admin staff are only O365 using the A3 licensing and department heads and up are A5 licenses. We can’t go all Google for security reasons they don’t adhere to specific privacy requirements regarding the protection of information regarding minors and such. The security packages that come with A5 are pretty nice though and have come in handy so I am sold. Office 365 isn’t just Word and Excel depending how far down the rabbit hole you go it covers a lot.
 
Wonder how often those "Updates with latest features" result in lost productivity as users search for how to do that thing they just did yesterday but can't find today? Some things just don't need frequent changes.
 
my job switched to outlook 365 and im miserable. im og, always used and loved outlook express, 2016, etc etc.. and being pushed on this 365 shit is horrible, slow and ruins my productivity.
 
RogueKitsune said:
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.
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Sorry but no, libre/open office doesn't replace fill blown office in the slightest. While what you say is true for most users, your statement on the only ones who need office is just false. If you have ever put together a business use case document, you would run into the limitations of libre super fast.

Also as someone who was a hiring manager for years, honestly everyone needs access to word for resume creation. I cannot tell you how many resumes I've trashed over the years because someone created it in stupid open office, didn't know how to save it so it would open in word or as a PDF properly and I just ended up with a mess on my end. If I had to guess, I would wager somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50% of the non word document resumes I've received over the years weren't saved properly. People are stupid when it comes to file formats.

Back on topic, I'll never willingly use the subscription model. Office isn't updated nearly enough to justify it. Office 365 is for suckers.
 
Yeah .. i paid 99$ for home and student 10 years ago... That would have been a $1000 if subscription... WHAT A DEAL!!..AND I GET 6!!! INSTALLATIONS!!!! I am jumping on this RIGHT NOW!!! /S
If they ever only offer subscription, then never will I buy their product.. ever.
 
Plebs and others do not care, as long as it is available to use when needed.
 
I have a 365 sub for the onedrive space mainly...and then pull down office from it onto my machines
I never use the 365 office functionality really
 
Uvaman2 said:
Yeah .. i paid 99$ for home and student 10 years ago... That would have been a $1000 if subscription... WHAT A DEAL!!..AND I GET 6!!! INSTALLATIONS!!!! I am jumping on this RIGHT NOW!!! /S
If they ever only offer subscription, then never will I buy their product.. ever.
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I would still be on 2003 if not for the 64-bit and multithreading support added later, so I bought 2013 through work for $10. 6 years on and $420 later for a subscription? Yeah, I'm not seeing the advantage here.
 
I'm against this for a few reasons but if it works for you then all the power to ya.

1. Not into adding unnecessary monthly subscription fees for something I isn't likely to get a major monthly update. This isn't like an a/v solution that's keeping out network safe.
2. Not into something we have to depend on the internet for. I don't need 20-30 employees getting angry because they can't access files or software due to the myriad of reasons that can happen whether local or offsite. Our connection is pretty stable but things can happen.
3. Buy once and move on for years until you really need the upgrade or slowly leech indefinitely. For a funds strapped organization I'd think it would be an obvious choice to avoid. I upgraded us from 2006 to 2016 a few years ago and can't think of a single reason to upgrade any time soon.
4. What about the risk of MS changing their policy or breaking something? Well, because, 10 has given me so much confidence in their ongoing strategy. Not about to give them even more power over our data.

For those speaking about it being free remember, when its free you are the product.
 
Advil said:
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.
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The only thing I've gotten out of WIndows over the last 23 years is USB upgrades and the move to 64-bit. I think Notepad is paid for by now. Otherwise I've been subsidizing the Enterprise side.
 
We use everything Microsoft at work including Azure and Dynamics products. Some of the integrations across products are pretty useful in the enterprise environment. OneDrive file sharing was hit or miss early on. It's been pretty reliable lately.

For home use as well as basic business use where frequent collaboration and sharing across large teams isn't needed, the regular MS Office is plenty.
 
For me it was a matter of Office 2019 being $19 via my company for the Home Use Program. That's a one-time payment.
Even at its most discounted Office 365 isn't ever in that ballpark. If they could make 365 part of the HUP, I'd probably bite.
 
as a small business working civil engineer/land surveyor.

nothing i do as a document style requires more than wordpad. my office doesn't DO word processing for much besides a quick letter/invoice/introduction to a report.

however i have used open office for decades since the word processing is just that,, word processing. for someone who started on a typewriter then moved to an IBM PC clone(it had a 20 MEGABYTE HDD) around 1988ish, i have no NEED for fancy, give me spell correct and i am good.

all my other work is in hydrocad or autocad (which we will never upgrade until the city we do a lot of submissions for requires us too) v2004.

my issue with upgrading software -for autocad at least- is i am going to have to relearn most of the basic stuff and or revert to the menu's i KNOW like the back of my hand. when we bought our civil software it came with the new civil 3dpro and the old land development desktop 2004.. installed the civil 3dpro...and within an hr of attempting to import data from our survey equipment, i gave up (after calling cs and going, i want to import my survey point data, how do i do it? and CS went, you cannot yet.)i installed land development desktop 2004 and started using that... been using it since. eventually i'll have to upgrade but until i ABSOLUTELY have too, i won't. what i have works, works well, and i do not have to PAY a subscription.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Back on topic, I'll never willingly use the subscription model. Office isn't updated nearly enough to justify it. Office 365 is for suckers.
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Yeah the "updates" seem to be trivial stuff. When I went from 7 years on Excel 2010 to Excel 365, I expected to be blown away by a new level of intuitiveness, more polish and more features. But its indistinguishable from Excel 2010 aside from more chart types. Same bugs, limitations, annoyances.
 
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I pay for the home office 365. 6 users and 1TB one-drive each. That's 6TB of cloud storage. Google is quoting me $139.99/yr CAD for 1TB of google drive space, or $10USD/user/month for g-suite which is essentially the same price as office 365.

I pay for office 365 for business for my employees at around $15 CAD/month each. Similar to the home version, we get individual one-drive and company one-drive space and all the office apps we want (other than visio....). We get skype for business which we use all the time for meetings, desktop sharing, etc. It also handles outlook/exchange etc.

As I see it, $15 is like 5-10 minutes of billable work per employee. I prefer skype meetings to hangouts meetings and much prefer the office 365 mailboxes to the google ones when it comes to shared mailboxes, distribution lists, etc.
 
Personally and this may be because I'm more familiar with MS Office but I much prefer their suite to other free or Google options. I've used OpenOffice and Google's suite and it's not near as good as MS Office for me. I use it mainly for work and do pretty extensive work in Excel, OneNote, Word, and Outlook. No other suite has pulled me in yet.
 
Domingo said:
For me it was a matter of Office 2019 being $19 via my company for the Home Use Program.
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I use HUP also. The thing that pisses me off about is that it doesn't let you do a custom install to select what apps you want; it forces you to install everything and won't let you uninstall any of the apps. All I want is Word and Excel; I don't need Skype for Business, Access, and all of the other BS.
 
Bankie said:
I use HUP also. The thing that pisses me off about is that it doesn't let you do a custom install to select what apps you want; it forces you to install everything and won't let you uninstall any of the apps. All I want is Word and Excel; I don't need Skype for Business, Access, and all of the other BS.
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Same. From memory, I don't think Office 365 does either. I was using it last year and it was basically identical.
On my home machine I only need the cores of Word, Excel, PPT, and (maybe) Publisher. Normally I'd use InDesign vs. Publisher, but it never hurts have to multiple options. I'm indifferent about Access since I've never used it.
I definitely don't need Skype for Business or Outlook.
 
Bankie said:
I use HUP also. The thing that pisses me off about is that it doesn't let you do a custom install to select what apps you want; it forces you to install everything and won't let you uninstall any of the apps. All I want is Word and Excel; I don't need Skype for Business, Access, and all of the other BS.
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There's a way, I've done it where O365 just installs word and Excel. Requires creating a custom install XML file and a specific command line parameter. YouTube has some videos on "customize office 365 installation".

MS can't seem to understand that force installing shit and removing user choice doesn't increase usage. Not sure they'll ever get it because they keep doubling down on it.
 
The company I work at uses office so that is what I have gotten used to. To each their own. Are we really trying to decide who the cool kids are by what software they use?
 
I get the push for Office365 and for the average person or family it is probably the best choice. I think the problem comes when people don't use the option to download and install the desktop apps which give a bit more features and make it easier to use. Overall given a choice, I would prefer the regular desktop application. I have used O365 for a few years now and it feels pretty gimped compared to the full office desktop application. The online outlook is just hot garbage. If it wasn't for needed certain features for work, I would stick with LibreOffice. Even so, I tend to use LibreOffice quite a bit instead at home unless I absolutely have to use MS Office.

As for some comments that it isn't user friendly, I disagree. Office 365 is quite user friendly, it is old users who are used to other programs that tend to have more issues. Just like when they switched to the ribbon style.
 
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I haven't paid for Office in 15 years. What makes Microsoft think I need to upgrade now? I first bought Office 2004 for college ($99 back then). I then found a legal way to upgrade that to 2007 and later found a legal way to upgrade that to 2010 and have been using that since. I use it so infrequently I couldn't justify even paying the $15 to use the Home Use Program to upgrade to 2019.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Wonder how often those "Updates with latest features" result in lost productivity as users search for how to do that thing they just did yesterday but can't find today? Some things just don't need frequent changes.
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The constant updates work as well as windows 10 constant updates at times.


there is a reason WHY the office repair tool is so easy to access

LOL
 
I swear MS tinkers with the Office UI just for the hell of staying busy. My firm was acquired last year so I ended up bouncing between Office 2016, Office 365 (personal), Office 2019, and a corporate install of Office 365 in a matter of a few months. ALL of them look and work slightly differently, especially when it comes to view settings and what's on the ribbon. In some cases, the same suite would change slightly from one week to the next.
 
For my personal use, Libre Office works just fine. I don't care what my employer uses, it's on their dime. If they pick something that makes me less productive, again, that's on their dime.
 
I was waiting for a "Goddamnit, they always DID like you best", table flip, exit scene.
 
Advil said:
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.
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I work with PhDs in academia, these are people so wrapped up in their heads that velcro shoes are often a challenge for them. They seem to be able to figure out how to buy all sorts of MS products. They can't figure out how to get apple mail to work though. They too think MS is evil and too complicated, despite the evidence to the contrary.


RogueKitsune said:
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.
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THe office app world is weird. 100% of my work I could get done in something simpler than office. But I work with people who can't, or where working around other options' limitations is a pain in the ass, so I use office. And it is generally a quality product.

When I got started in the IT world, we spent a LOT of money on a specialized product because Word couldn't handle really large documents. Now it can and that product is dead.

Office kicks the crap out of alternatives for workflow automation still. I know one area where everything still falls short is research writing. I support lots of people who still use plug ins for that, and guess what? those plug ins are for office and one note and evernote. The research side has options, but in the end the only app that is supported for easily pulling in your citations is word.

Then there's excell. Run locally on a beefy machine it will kick every other options' ass in terms of how big a spreadsheet it will process. Rows, columns, number of tabs, automation, etc. Unlike automation in word, automation of your excel spreadsheets is a must have for a certain level of user crunching numbers.

More importantly, it isn't that hard to do the basics. The only area I have run into where simpler is winning via it being a targeted design feature are some of the novel writing and screen writing apps out there.

I've gotten a number of home office small business types to go libre rather than spend moeny, but most places it aint cutting it for one reason or another. In part because office is still cheap enough.


As for TCO going office 365 vs office YYYY, the one time purchase is cheaper, but by the end of year two, it will be horribly out of date in terms of support and features. If you touch O365 and use the feature set, you want the subscription.
 
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I can get Office 365 free from work. I still use Softmaker Office 2019 because I think it's better. The reality of it is though that a typical home user would probably be just fine with Office Online, Google Docs, Apple Iwork, or Zoho Docs.
 
I'm going to just bypass all the anti-Office rants.

I've been trying to get my employer off the year-release Offices for a while. They end up being more expensive (due to versions going out of date and becoming useless) and have key management stuff to deal with. Office 365 is just "install it as needed, cut MS a check." Our major issues have been around OneDrive which management don't want but seems to be mandatory. I'm trying to avoid MS accounts, and they apparently have SSO support in several of their business tiers, but maybe not the one we've been flirting with getting.

With any luck we'll be on O365 this year. Hopefully.
 
Only a company as out of touch as Microsoft would create an advertising campaign denigrating one of their own products.
 
Yeah as my rep explained it to me they are intending the builds with years at the end to be for static work stations best paired with Win10 LTSB, and office 365 for everybody else so far we are liking O365, but we are using a lot of it.
 
Megalith said:
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.
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Meh?

Why would you need your Office package to be constantly upgraded?

I'm still using Office 2010 at home, and I'm not missing any features from newer versions. Heck, the only reason I'm not still using Office 2000, is because back in 2010 I took advantage of the Home Use Program (HUP) at my employer and paid $9.95 for Office 2010 Professional Plus.

So I paid $9.95 once and it is still good today, 9 years later.

If Office 365 had existed this entire time, and I had paid for it every year, I would have paid ~$900 for the privilege of using Office.

That's only ~100 times more. Why would I do that?

The newest versions of Office offer me literally nothing I want that I can't already do with my 2010 version.

Microsoft must take people for fools.
 
MS Office is a great product but it is hard to keep improving it... there is only so much you can improve in Excel, Word, etc... I prefer the non-subscription version. Office 365 is pretty nice though since you can install it on quite a few devices and get the upgrades as a part of the subscription. Most people don't need the newer features though and can get by with old versions of Office. I never really cared for Google Docs, Libre, or OpenOffice..
 
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