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You’re never going to love Office, because it’s Office — it’s the thing you use to make money and do things you actually enjoy. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be (relatively) painless, affordable, and smart. Starting today, it is.
Office 365 Home Premium is a fancy word for Microsoft’s new subscription-based, cloud-hosted way of getting Word, PowerPoint, and Excel (plus corporate stuff, if you want it). Discs are obsolete — this is a very modern Office, and frankly, it’s as lovely as word processing and spreadsheets (blech!) can be.
The usual Microsoft Office suite, available as a permanent download, temporarily-streamed software, or web apps.
Anyone who needs to get work done, be it homework or business work.
Office 2013 (the latest version you get with the 365 subscription) doesn’t quite hit the same sweet design notes as Microsoft’s overall Metro UI, but it’s the least-ugly Office yet. And that’s saying something! The interface is clean, and the option to space everything out for touch is welcome.
You already know how to use Office — and everything will still be mostly familiar. Certain features are repositioned, but it’s nothing a day of acclimation won’t fix. And yes, it’s totally usable on a tablet or touchscreen.
Everything you do is accessible pretty much anywhere you are — your phone, five of your computers, or a web browser on any computer in the world. It’s the best parts of Office’s concrete productivity with the flexibility of Google Docs. Super convenient, constantly-synced.
Mac users are still pretty boned. Microsoft says the OS X version of Office will continue to be 18 months behind Windows, so your iMac won’t be able to touch Office 2013 until well after 2013.
To link up with Office 365′s all my docs are everywhere cloud-based sync ballet, you have to log in with a Microsoft ID. No problem. You’ll then be asked to log in over and over, whenever you access different parts of the software. Problem.
Whether you spend £8 a month on a month-by-month basis or spring for a year upfront, Office 365 is a hell of a good deal. There’s a very good chance you need this software in order to pay the bills or graduate. You’re not going to be grinning and weeping while you make PowerPoint presentations, but Office is friendlier and more economical than at any point in its history. Your dorm room or cubicle will be happier.
Still, if you can get by with the basic bits of Google Docs for bare bones word processing, you can probably skip all this. [Office.com]
Pricing: £7.99/Month, £79.99 for an entire year, £60 for four years (students and teachers)
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I haven’t used Office in over two years. I just thought it was a great product but had a lot of bloat I don’t use. Since I drooped it I haven’;t missed it Openoffice or Google Docs cover me for all my needs. Having said this, I needed Office before this for heavy use, like mail merging. But for general basic home use Office is a complete waste of money and disc space.
Death by spreadsheet!
Yep, got it yesterday on the subscription plan. The cloud-based model is brilliantly leveraged in a way that combines the best of offline and online worlds. The ‘streaming’ installation process is also highly impressive.
I’m currently in the process of transferring 9GB of documents to SkyDrive…
I use Excel & Word from Office 2007, Google Docs and Open Office depending on what I’m doing and whom I’m working with.
Can’t imagine that I’ll upgrade to this, I’ll probably just move more and more across to Google Docs (my preferred one).
Also I have to say that watching that video of someone using it on what I assume is a Surface Pro (or similar) just confirmed my concerns about using touch screens for some things; I’m a lot faster and more accurate with either a touchpad or mouse than that guy was touching the screen.
True, I always hated touchpads dude.
“Whether you spend £8 a month on a month-by-month basis or spring for a year upfront, Office 365 is a hell of a good deal”
How is paying for something you can get for free ever a good deal?
What can you get free that does what Office 365 offers? (I include downloading Office 2010/2013 in that)
And by ‘downloading’ I mean ‘stealing’.
For home use one could use open source document suite and keep it backed up in Dropbox, £8 is just not worth for home users.
I think if I was using a laptop with a real keyboard and whenever I touched the screen that keyboard would pop up, that would really get on my tits.
Sam, I want to hear your voice send me to sleep in these videos, not lift music!
Incidentally, I’m a uni student, so I get it for £60 for 4 years (£15 a year)
“Whether you spend £8 a month on a month-by-month basis or spring for a year upfront, Office 365 is a hell of a good deal. There’s a very good chance you need this software in order to pay the bills or graduate … £60 for four years (students and teachers)”
I’m a Uni student and got Office 2010 University (aka Professional) for £69 – for as long as I want to use it. How is this a better deal?
What does “impiortant” (1:06) mean? Maybe it would be an idea to replace some of this giz staff with robots if they don’t even know how to use spell check in the office suite they’re trying to show off…