back to article Office 2013 now available for some home users

Office 2013 is still a few weeks away from release, but Microsoft has made it available to certain customers as part of its Home Use Program (HUP), a scheme it uses to sell cheap software to folks whose employers have a Software Assurance deal. Office 2013 has just been added to the HUP, at very reasonable prices: the UK page …

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  1. Paul J Turner

    Office Processional Plus?

    If Only! The sooner buried, the better.

    1. tirk
      Coat

      Re: Office Processional Plus?

      The Emperor's New Clothes involved a procession....

  2. Pen-y-gors

    Office Processional Plus?

    you have to queue up to use it?

  3. Lee Taylor
    FAIL

    I tried this out on my new laptop and it is junk. Go into Word try to open a file on your local pc.

    The old days ALT-F O..... Now at least mouse clicks on various icons to get the dialog open.

    Then the fact its try to force Sky Drive on to you rather than use local storage....

    1. CaptainCorrection
      FAIL

      Ctrl - O

      Always has been, always will be

    2. Matthew 3

      ?

      Alt, F, O still works for me.

      It then places a number by all of the recent documents you've edited so that you don't need the mouse (or arrow keys) to pick out the one you want.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HUP!

    That's the sound you make when you vomit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: HUP!

      Also the Wonderstuff's second album.

    2. Magnus Ramage

      Re: HUP!

      Back in the day (c1990) it was the one-word post we used to bring message threads back to the top of the list on the Cambridge University mainframe's bulletin board system. (Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.)

    3. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: HUP!

      Only if you purchased office at the full price then to be given a code from your employer.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Microsoft knows...

    ...that the lack of the start menu is a lack in functionality. And as such they're now pushing the start menu functionality onto other programs. Amongst which, you guessed it: Office.

    Unfortunately that makes it extremely annoying to work with, for me that is. Its the simple things; whenever I start, say, Word I do so to start a new document. If I needed to start with another document (be this an old file or template) then I would have selected it from the jumplist (in the Win7 start menu).

    This Word otoh. always starts with the "Recent files "tab"" (in the backstage view). And you can't get around it, which is /extremely/ annoying.

    And don't get me started on the "touch simplified" menu's and such, that's a major annoyance in itself.

    I really don't see the need to upgrade from 2010, IMO that still is the better version. Especially if you're on Windows 7.

  6. TwoWolves
    Thumb Down

    Stay with 2010

    I've been using the Office 365 preview for the last month. While I'm quite happy with the move to the ribbon the colour schemes and flat-styling is dreadful to use, its very hard on the eyes and difficult to navigate. Office 2010 was perfect, I just don't know why they didn't stay with that design.

  7. Usually Right or Wrong
    Pint

    Ordered and will wait

    Just ordered using the HUP and included Visio and Project, at the price, it is daft not to if offered and you use office at home, which I do. I will wait though and see what SP1 or the next update brings, usually these fix major issues and address UI criticisms if MS are going to address these. Also ordered Win 8 Pro which is on offer until end Jan, again, will hold off until I can confirm all my software will work. This is probably my cheapest upgrade ever, but happy with Office 2010 and Win 7, so will let others dive in and will learn from them before upgrading.

    I reckon Ciaus Petronius would recognise the grief of software upgrades, ribbons and menus, even in 66AD, "We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation."

    Beer, because that is what Fridays were invented for.

    1. PhilipN Silver badge

      Re: Ordered and will wait

      That the Petronius who played soccer under Benitez?

    2. Rampant Spaniel

      Re: Concur

      That would be Ogburn :-) Not Gaius Petronius, but it's still so very true.

  8. Doogie Howser MD
    Facepalm

    Is there anyone left..

    ..who gives a shit about new versions of Office? Won't be long now before the shrink wrapped product is largely dead. I use Google Docs for all my stuff now (except highly confidential stuff, obviously. Only a Hmong would put that in the cloud) and I find that all the buttons I ever use (bold, underline, bullet, justify) work just fine and do not require me to remove wads of cash from my trousers for the benefit of Billy G.

    Hardly even news. I work for a 50,000+ employee company, and we're not even fully off XP+Office 2003 yet!

    1. Jan 0 Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Is there anyone left..

      What have you got against the Hmong?

      Let's keep non-comedy racism out of the Register.

      1. Spoonsinger
        Holmes

        Re: What have you got against the Hmong?

        Fairly sure one of them ate my sandwich. (It was in the fridge last time I looked, and now it isn't).

    2. Yet Another Commentard

      Re: Is there anyone left..

      "Won't be long now before the shrink wrapped product is largely dead."

      Be careful for what you wish.

      That's what MSFT wants. The pricing on shrinkwrap vs subscription (Office 365 or whatever it's called these days) is so far weighted to subscription that the latter is the most viable option for all but the most die-hard must have a disc types. A subscription is an income stream that's a bit more predictable. Subscriptions bring along SkyDrive (or Lync) so more lock-in.

  9. Idy
    FAIL

    BUT ALL THERE IS IS CAPITAL LETTERS. AS SOMEONE WITH MILD OCD THIS PISSED ME OFF GREATLY.

    Stick with 2010.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Oh ...

      ... don't worry. Those without OCD get pissed off greatly too =)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    low low price

    apart from getting some people to try it out and hook them in at a low cost, the gambit may relate to the problem of workers who get the IT bods to slip it onto their personal laptop using the corporate serial code with a wink and a nod.

  11. DutchP

    desktop personal productivity software

    a misnomer if ever there was one

    Only partly joking here. Word is an application that I spend a large part of my workday in, and no other program has ever caused so much loss of work and productivity as this one. Crashes, hangups, stuff that didn't get saved and corrupted files. Without it, the world would be a better place. Or mine, at least.

    I'll take libre office any day of the week.

  12. James Gosling
    Megaphone

    Why pay?

    When Libre Office is FREE!

    1. Pet Peeve
      FAIL

      Re: Why pay?

      Trolling. Don't do it.

      HUP is a pretty amazing deal. Regardless of how much you may hate the interface (and everybody does, it's an angry icon salad), it is well worth 10 bucks for perfect compatibility with files from your work machine.

  13. Techs UK
    Happy

    It's so cool

    Don't you know cool when you see it? They did a great job.

  14. Steve 76

    Reality Check

    So how many times must we re-locate cut and paste and call it amazing and revolutionary?

  15. Sooty

    I got it today

    I was of the view it was £8.95 for professional plus so I might as well give it a try. So far it feels a bit weird, it's a different look, but I'm not sure how much of an improvement on 2010 it is yet.

    It was quite odd that it didn't seem to do much of an install, it didn't even replace 2010.

  16. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

    Just a mo

    "bleeding edge of desktop personal productivity software."

    What's that got to do with MS Orifice?

    1. cosymart
      Facepalm

      Re: Just a mo

      The bleeding bit!

  17. Steveir

    The landing screen

    Dunno if this is of use but certainly in group policy for office 2013 there is an option for starting on the usual screen and not the landing screen...might be in options in word etc.

    Been trialing it on several machines and the staff seem to like it, even the brilliant white screen which suprised me. I switched to dark grey straight away, hard on the eyes. Other than that gripe i quite like it. Some nice touches especially opening pdfs.

    Windows 8 is another issue altogether.....tifkam would cause chaos.

  18. Dare to Think
    IT Angle

    Can someone enlighten me?

    I really don't know what the advantage of MS Office is, in comparison to Libre Office and Calligra Suite.

    Can someone enlighten me here?

    Whenever I discuss the issue why a company is spending thousands if not millions in licensing money every year on Office products, even die-hard Linux implementers don't want to move away from it. Don't count on support from the Acca trained CFO either, he cannot combine technological processes with financial decisions. All I hear is subjective arguments which can be summarized with "'cos we've always done it this way". When pushed, imagined or rarely occurring examples are mentioned, for example:

    . "There is no support for Libre Office or Calligra Suite" - not true

    . "Visio files won't work" - not true, they can be imported with Libre Office Drawing

    . "The files our customers send to us cannot be opened with Libre Office or Calligra Suite" - not true, I've seen mostly data being sent in pdf format, also for legal reasons, as it is not that easy to change a pdf file. And, it is easy to export files in docx, xlsx, and pdf format with Libre Office or Calligra Suite. Libre Office even has a pdf import extension.

    . "There is no project management application" - not true, there is Calligra Plan and not every employee needs PM software.

    By comparison, open source or free products like rsync, Squid Proxy and Apache Web Server are happily installed on mission critical, revenue generating systems, but when it comes to desktop software large expenditures are signed off without accepting questions.

    Thus, can someone please let me know MS Office' unique advantage?

    1. Blitterbug
      Unhappy

      Re: Can someone enlighten me?

      Mr Think, it's really the docx thing in my experience. I've many custs who have never even enabled the display of file extensions; they don't even know what a .doc is, let alone docx. On top of this you have to then explain how to export using an older format labelled 'Office XP / 2003' or whatever. It just makes their eyes glaze over. All quite deliberate and cynically planned for, of course.

    2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: Can someone enlighten me?

      There are two major advantages of MS Office over other suites:

      (a) documents *look* the same. Ever since we went WYSIWYG, the fact that a document word wraps at the same position has become FAR more important than what's actually in it, so using MS Office means you won't get whinged at by people who have nothing better to do than making sure your margins are the same.

      (b) you don't have to wait for the next incarnation of import/export facilities in Open/LibreOffice. The people who write this stuff have a lot of work still ahead of them, because I don't think MS will ever give up on inserting stupidity into their format just to make their life difficult. Don't get me wrong, I have immense respect for their work (I work by default in OpenOffice) but if I have to make the choice between battling for 30 mins to get things in shape or 5 minutes wait for MS Word to load up I'm afraid MS Office pays for itself quickly. It's just not worth the hassle.

      Having said that, I use OpenOffice as my main package (somehow LibreOffice is too different for me to get on with) but on OSX there is a VERY annoying bit of behaviour that makes me jump to Apple iWork's Pages or MS Word: dragging in an image. For some bizarre reason, OpenOffice (and LibreOffice) insist on opening that image up in Draw instead of just dumping it on the page like any other word processor does. So you have to use "insert image" to make it behave, *very* annoying, and never adequately explained.

      Each package has IMHO its own killer feature:

      MS Word gives me a command not found in other packages: "resume cursor position". It's a pretty hidden command which hides under Shift-F5, but if you're editing a big document it's fantastically useful. It's about as useful as the ribbon isn't.

      Apple's "Pages" gives me good layout facilities (once you understand them), it's very quick to hack up a layout - it feels more DTP than word processing focused

      Open/LibreOffice give me the same UI on Windows, Linux and OSX and as I use all 3 it's an easy choice. To me, the Navigator is worth its code in Gold as it's like Word's Document Map, but far more intelligent. That, and its ability to rescue MS Word documents where Word has screwed up formatting so much in documents it won't even open them. OOo has no problem with it.

      However, I really wished that every one of them started with a tutorial on the importance of using styles. Once you get the hang of that, structure and layout are *so* much easier..

  19. Jock in a Frock
    Thumb Up

    HUP is a good initiative

    My employer rolled out 2010 last year, and opened up the HUP offer at the same time. I took them up on it and got 2 licences for home use.

    It's nice having exactly the same user interface on both my work laptop and my home PC.

    I can't speak for 2013, and don't think my company are planning an upgrade.

  20. RFC822
    Meh

    Where's the weather?

    For £8.95, and being bored with all the snow, I thought what the heck and went for it.

    First impression is that some aspects of the UI aren't too bad - I can live with the ribbon bar in "show tabs" mode.

    What I hate is that they have removed most of the themes that were in Outlook 2010, so you have a choice of White, Very White or Extremely White! They've also removed most of the visual cues that delineate the different elements on the screen.

    Also: most of the reviews say that you can have the weather on your Calendar - but I don't have this listed under Options for Calendar. Is it just me, or is it something that was removed for RTM (or UK users)?

  21. westlake
    Pint

    Dare To Think: "Thus, can someone please let me know MS Office' unique advantage?"

    The chances are quite good that every local high school. college, public library, or community center within easy driving distance from your home is offers courses in MS Office. Recruiting experienced MS Office workers is dead easy pretty much anywhere south of the Artic Circle.

    Microsoft sells Office as part of an integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size. The geek still tends to think in terms of the stand-alone office suite.

    The office manager doesn't want themes.

    He wants mature tools for deployment and administration.

    He wants to be able to place his full time staff, temps and senior volunteers at any available desk and be productive.

  22. HipposRule

    Give me the down voters

    OK, I'm not a power user but I've been running 2013 for a couple of months (RTM version) and I definitely prefer it to 2010. A lot cleaner looking and some bits I've been bemoaning for years (tables in Word for example) greatly improved.

  23. Oengus

    The Australia tax rises its ugly head yet again.

    I want to know how Microsoft can justify the 60% premium on the cost of this in Australia. If I login to the HUP site and enter the code for my employer then change the country from US to AU to NZ I get different pricing based on the country. Microsoft (and other companies) claim (in a governmental pricing enquiry) that it is all to do with the size of the Australian market and the costs that implies. If that is the case then why is it that the cheapest place to get the software is NZ (the smallest market) where it costs $NZ9.95 (~$AU8)?

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