Re: UK users?

The UK price is £79.99 per year including VAT. Presumably the reg missed out that fact to catch you out with that £99 presume!

Re: UK users?

@TheVogon - hello RICHTO.

For your erudition - Munich switched from Windows to Linux / Open office and have ALREADY saved 11 million euros. They will continue to save even more in the future, now that they have already covered the one-off cost of switching.

FYI - even large companies are now demanding justification for employees to use MS Office. I'm talking bluechip and I am talking about huge bluechip. I know this first hand. They are standardising on LibreOffice to save money.

A lot of this is down to BYOD - people are using Android and iDevices these days and exchanging data as PDF's or in ODF formats.

Re: UK users?

LOL @ Already. They started the project over a decade ago and still havnt successfully completed it.

"For the entire project, which is now ending it's 79th month, the rate is of conversion has been 31 per month, or about one per day since May 28, 2003. Assuming they could triple throughput to 85 machines per month, the

project will be completed in another 11.2 years, in the year 2020."

The savings are bullshit too - it cost them far more than they will ever save to actually try and migrate.

Not to mention this is pretty much to ONLY attempt to do this anywhere as - everyone else long ago realised what a waste of time this was, this utter failure being a great example of why it isn't worth it....

Re: UK users?

The extra bit is outlook, publisher, and access plus the skype calls and 5 licenses instead of the current 2010 3.

YMMV as to whether that's worth it for you, but around here(Oz), the price difference between Office Home and Office with Outlook is about $100 retail rate and you only get one license when you add outlook rather than 3 without it. The price with the other two products is even higher.

I'm not saying the price is worth it. Most home users don't need access or publisher and unless you've got an exchange server to hook it up to outlook is largely surplus to requirements. Five licenses instead of three is nice, though we won't really know whether home and student will end up with five for 2013 or not. If you need those extra things though and you plan on upgrading your office and you make skype phone calls, even the UK price is a steal.

Greedy bastards

Are MS trying to kill their joke of a subscription model even before it starts?

£80 per year for a bloated, hard to use (thanks to TIFKAM influence) office suite containing a massive amount of crud that no sane home user is ever likely to want to use? Fine, it can be installed on up to five systems, but how many home users really care about that? To save money most are willing to have it on one or two system and leave the others as they are.

As a generalisation, home users don't care about Outlook, most use webmail these days as online mail services integrate well with mobile phones, attempting to use Outlook effectively ties you to MS mail services of some description. Publisher? Sane professionals don't use it, home users get by with Word. Next they'll be flogging powerpoint to home users... The home users that may want to use much of this software tend to want to use it for business purposes, which if you check the licence terms on this service is prohibited - it's for home, personal use only.

Now if MS were to provide something like a subscription service for just MS Word at £15 per year for home use only then they'd have a massive uptake. Unfortunately the greed has set in and they're more interested in foisting the rest of the MS Office suite at users and trying to get them locked into proprietary non interoperable software packages and systems than providing a good value service for end users.

Re: UK users?

@TheVogon - so you are accusing the Munich council of lying?

Or is it more likely that you are spreading FUD, like your usual lies about Linux being less secure than Windows?

Re: UK users?

@AC shills -

that "report" that the Munich Migration cost more money than it has saved was paid for my Microsoft. I wonder if it is trustworthy?

Re: UK users?

Meanwhile Freiburg - run by Die Grüne and about as countercultural as you'll find - decided in November to move back to MS Office.

Re: UK users?

Most home users don't need........publisher

In certain places, MS Publisher is pretty much de rigeur for school projects as it's simple to use and produces good results. I'd love to use the OO equivalent, but there isn't one.

Investigations into open-source alternatives have revealed that these fall into two categories. Either a full blown DTP package, which is waaaaay OTT for what's required and has a learning curve like the north face of the Eiger, or something simple but incompatible and shit.

Thus for the kids' homework, MS Office is a "must have". Something fairly compatible isn't good enough, as the transition between using Publisher at school and whatever-it-is at home has to be seamless, so the UI needs to be near as dammit identical.

Re: UK users?

Actually the migration cost Munich €43 million more than staying with Microsoft:

http://www.itworld.com/open-source/337658/microsoft-wont-release-study-challenged-success-munichs-linux-migration

Did you even read that article?

What it actually says is that someone at HP produced a report that seemed to say that the migration to LiMux cost Munich more than staying with Windows, but that neither Microsoft nor HP will now allow anyone to see the report (which suggests that it may contain errors) and that the people in Munich still believe that they are saving money (and one presumes that they've done their sums properly).

Re: UK users?

@dajames - indeed, the report is a joke - but the rumour of it allows astroturfing shills to spread FUD as we see happening in this thread.

Some people fall for it. It's one of the reasons I dislike MS, they use dirty tricks.

Re: UK users?

Well done Eadon, you got the price right this time, still missed out the bit where I pointed out the utter failure of another City to roll it out.

6/10 for effort.

Re: UK users?

dont bother arguing. I tried once and I have experience in costing an open source solution change. As I said back then, open source is not necessarily cheaper than an MS solution. Like most things it depends what you want and what resources you have. MS worked better for us. Open source wasnt cost effective.

some people must bang their drums though regardless of listening to the customer.

Why have the hassle of remote desktops when you can have LibreOffice?

@HolyFreakingGhost - Open Source alternatives to Office can be installed on as many devices as you like. No need for those logging onto remote desktops and all that hassle of working with the expensive MS Office unproductivity suit. And good luck reactivating MS Office if your hardware changes.

Microsoft products are extremely inconvenient to use and manage. Open source frees you from these hassles and they are free.

@Oninoshiko

Agreed.

This is one of those situations where MS Office isn't the best choice IMO. In fact; although it may sound very cost effective at first you'll effectively end up paying (much) more in the longer run while you actually get a lot less functionality, esp. in comparison to other solutions.

Because if you keep that subscription for 2 years you're already paying much more than a single copy of the desktop version. And although the license of that desktop version doesn't allow multiple installations one could ask him- herself how many times it would happen when everyone will be working with Office at exactly the same time? Quite possibly the license could be shared.

But most of all; in comparison to the online variants of MS Office I think its safe to say that both LibreOffice as well as OpenOffice can featurewise blow it out of the water so to speak. For no additional costs at all.

I'd say people are actually better off with the open source variants in this scenario. Because if, for whatever reason, you do run into a situation where some of the more advantaged features could come in handy then you're pretty much screwed with Office 365. Its quite a decent product, but by far comparable to a desktop version featurewise. The open source variants otoh. do provide all you might need as a home users, even more, and for a lot less money too.

With plans like these I don't see Microsoft coming out on top. Too expensive while providing too little features.

Arrogant and Insane...

Expecting people to spend $100 per year on a problem that was already solved 20 years ago? Really?

For most people it should be $50 and done, period.

Most people simply don't need Word Perfect style overkill. The only reason this is even remotely an issue is the perception that you need to be compatible and even that is being eroded by tablets.

Re: Why have the hassle of remote desktops when you can have LibreOffice?

Ah yes, hassle free open source. I had LibreOffice running very nicely as a backport on my Ubutu 10.04LTS laptop. Until last week, when an upgrade removed LibreOffice completely, but left enough cruft in my system that OpenOffice wouldn't install. Yes, that's what every business user needs, the excitement of wondering whether a business-critical application will just vanish one day. Keeps you on your toes.

Still, all I had to do was upgrade to Xubuntu 12.04 using the handy distribution upgrade tool. Which left the system unable to boot, as is traditional with Ubuntu upgrade tools. So then all I had to do was reinstall from a USB stick, which went fine apart from the way that 12.04 no longer supports my wifi card, and it took four reinstalls and six reboots to find one of the many suggested solutions which worked.

@ JEDIDIAH - Re: Arrogant and Insane...

Wrote :- "Most people simply don't need Word Perfect style overkill. "

And if I did I still have my old copy of WordPerfect and could get it to run too. I would have thought that nearly everyone with a PC has had a workable word processor at some time, enough for their needs. What do people do with this software - has it all rotted away?

Re: Why have the hassle of remote desktops when you can have LibreOffice?

@HolyFreakinGhost

- and I'm pointing out the inconvenience that the MS Office DRM is putting you through, and showing that the alternative, open source, means you don't have to jump through hoops to make one licence work (sort of) for more than one device.

MS are treating you like a criminal and inconveniencing you - a paying customer - and you still seem happy to use their products. Stockholm syndrome, I think the word is, for those that like their prison guards.

"For $99.99 a year, buyers get the Office 365 Home Premium, which gives them a license to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access applications on five computers in the home. Subscribers also get 20GB of space on Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage system and 60 minutes worth of free Skype calls per month."

"If no payment is forthcoming, they will only be able to access their documents in read-only mode or via a printer"

My answer to this is to tell them to shove it up their arse, use Libre Office, and keep it all on your own hard drives.

"The biggest financial losers are those who purchase the Office Professional package. The $399.99 price tag converts to £254.1 or €296.64 at current rates, but the British will pay £389.99 and European counterparts get stung for €539.

It's not hard to see why open source office suites such as OpenOffice, and latterly LibreOffice, are proving so popular in Europe at the moment. US companies like Microsoft and Apple traditionally cite the higher costs of doing business across the pond as the reason for the price differential, but it's difficult to see how such high margins can be justified – in this hack's opinion, at least."

Microsoft = Gouge, Gouge, Gouge....... = Fuck them. Ripping you off = fucking them off.

and..........

"If they want users to move to a subscription model (which they DESPERATELY need, as they are starting to have difficulties coming up with new improvements), "

Improvements?

How do you top stupidity and grafting?

I know, lets change the packaging from 2013, to 2014 and double the prices!!!!

Smiley Face = Microsoft's best efforts sent me into the loving arms of Linux.

Re: They can charge

"else wise all those people who use MS Office are not going to be able to open any documents I send to them."

And with that attitude professionally you'll soon never have to send anyone a document again!

Re: They can charge

@admin - if people standardised on open standards - i.e. ODF - then there would be no problem. The problem is, Microsofts proprietary formats, which MS changes every 3 years to make life awkward for open source solutions trying to read these obfuscated formats.

@HolyFreakinGhost

"And with that attitude professionally you'll soon never have to send anyone a document again!"

You're right there, but for completely different reasons than you may realize. I think the OP makes a perfect argument, and lets not forget that we're talking about home usage here, NOT business use.

But about that sending... A few months ago a friend of mine setup a list of stuff (todo list) for me and a couple of other people. Basically the idea to 'share' some sort of knowledge base. Needless to say; in daily (work) life he's using MS Office but at home its all LibreOffice for him.

He didn't sent us any format at all; he sent us the URL of a text document which he put online using the Google tools. I clicked, and could view and edit. Even though I don't have a Google account (nor have any desire to get one).

To some extend you can always accomplish the same using SkyDrive (though I'm not 100% sure about that anymore considering the major changes MS made in this field recently).

My point: with the OP's attitude he doesn't even HAVE to send documents around. IMVHO.