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Office—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the old frenemies—are out of beta and ready to buy. Sort of: you buy the newest version of Office like you buy Netflix or Spotify, with a subscription. And it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Microsoft Office is usually a big purchase, or no purchase at all—sometimes it comes with your computer, or sometimes you’d have to shell out for the latest version. Not any more: Office 365 Home Premium, which includes the kitchen sink, doesn’t need to come on a couple-hundred-dollar disc. You can pay for Office for as long as you need it, going month by month (for £7.99 a month) or pay £79.99 for a year upfront (and save a little).
Either way, you’ll get a lot more from Microsoft than you have in the past: the entire suite (2013 on Windows, 2011 on a Mac) can be installed across five devices simultaneously (tablets, laptops, whatever), streaming versions of whichever application you happen to need can be beamed to any computer you’re on with an Internet connection, and all of your files will be synced as you work, whether you edit them on Office.com, your tablet, or your Windows Phone (if you’ve got one). You’ll even pick up an extra 20 GB of SkyDrive storage and an hour of free global Skype calling each year.
The subscription also incudes upgrades to any future versions of the suite, so you don’t need to fret about upgrade discs. If this sharing, streaming thing sounds like some sort of socialist plot to you, you cans pay a flat £110 for the home or £369 for the business editions, locking them to a single computer for all eternity.
OK, yes, it’s still Office. It’s the best version of Office—touch-friendly, simplified, less horrific on the eyes—but it’s still that software you have to use for work. Check out our hands-on here. But odds are Office isn’t an interesting choice for you, but a reality, just part of being a productive part of society that needs to mess around with .doc files like all the rest of us stiffs. This isn’t going to be the most exciting change in your life. But it’ll be a welcome one. Microsoft spread across all of your computer, the web, and (maybe) your phone makes sense. Paying for it while you feel like owning it makes sense—you’ll keep all your documents if you decide to go elsewhere, don’t worry. Being able to stream the software to computers off your beaten path makes sense. And not having to futz around with upgrades is just lovely. If you want Office, keep feeding the meter, and the rest should be pretty smooth. You can pick it up here, today.
Microsoft vs Apple: Battle of the Titans Over Future of SkyDrive (and Office) on iOS
Official Microsoft Office Suite For the iPad On the Way
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No, you torrent it.
damn right
You won’t be able to torrent an Office 365 subscription (and therefore won’t have any of the cloud-based features).
It’s part of the reason why MS are moving to a more services & cloud-based subscription model (to prevent piracy and incentivise people to pay for the value-add)
Which will undoubtly backfire, they really need Mr. Gates back in charge and kick that gorilla monsson out!
I’ve actually met that Gorilla twice and he’s not as useless as online media makes him seem. He is intelligent, he knows what he’s doing and more importantly has a great team around him.
Microsoft had to get into cloud services as people would have eventually found an alternative that offers them richer functionality. It’s the future; and to be honest…it’s given people the most compelling reason to upgrade since Office 2003.
Well I could just pirate it, getting all the latest features except the cloud ones, and just do what I was doing with office before, like putting them on my 52Gb dropbox, my skydrive or my google drive which I can already access from anywhere.
Plus, it’s too expensive for a standard family like mine.
And of course the other advantage of stealing other peoples hard work and investment is you don’t get the endless updates.
Don’t worry, I won’t be.
Why would I want to?
Fair dues mate personally I love swearing at software when it doesn’t do what I want it to and endless security patches
Bleeding edgers and families will love the rental price, the people who keep it 3 years or more, not so much.
Sounds like an infrastructure management nightmare in a large company. Chances are a lot of companies will just seek to extend whatever they’re doing right now – whether or not that means upgrading.
Still, it’s a cool set of options for the home user (especially those that work for themselves or do a lot of work at home and have a stingy IT budget at work). For a lot of the competitive features, though, I’d still go for Google Drive/Docs any day for free.
This is for home users… Not office users…
People wishing to deploy it in office will still contact MS volume licensing partners.
That’s the beauty of Microsoft. Most companies with any sense will have their Office Licenses covered by Software Assurance, which gives them entitlement to the latest version of Office; so “extending whatever they’re doing right now” covers 365.
With Office 365; I see the main business benefit (there are many) as being hosted Exchange. Customers with SA can elect to operate a hybrid model where some end-users operate under traditional ‘on-premise’ Exchange and others transition to a cloud backend. The cost benefits and management ease of the fully cloud-based offering are immense, and the hybrid model allows businesses to migrate at their own pace. Hosted Exchange is very much a Trojan Horse/Gateway Plan to the more fully-featured Office 365 offerings.
I work directly with dozens of multi-national organisations who are already using this.
Office 365 hasn’t been in Beta…it’s been available for businesses for ages. I’ve been using BPOS/Office 365 for a few years now and Office 2013 for months.
It is bloody useful!
I also like their Power View in Excel 2013, only wish it was also implemented in reporting services and not with a vendor lock-in with SharePoint(more a like CockPoint)
They should do this with Windows.
I don’t think it’s a million miles away. Windows can already be delivered via a full VDI to a Thin Client using Remote Desktop Services (RDS), VMware, Citrix etc. with great resilience/up-time in a corporate environment.
It’s not too difficult to imagine a ‘fully-cloud’ consumer Windows offering at some point in the future that provisions a desktop to a PC/Thin Client…The blocker (as ever) would be Network reliability and how that’s mitigated. Microsoft wouldn’t move until it was 100% ready.
They already have Hyper-V fully deployed for this.
No doubt Hyper-V will be the back-end. What I mean is that we can’t currently use a Live ID to sign-in to MS’s servers and request that our own personal Desktop VM be provisioned to us for us to work in, alter etc. and access from any device we see fit.
It can be done in terms of the technology available; but we’re a few years from it being reality.
Ah, I get what you mean, sorry.
Yes, that’s all within grasp I suppose, a few tricks up Microsoft’s sleeves?
I really think just like asp.net, they should make home version of the Office Open Source.
My experience with thin clients and Citrix has put me off wanting to use them. It may have been the infrastructure I was supporting but it was terrible. Roaming profiles were in use and constantly needed to be reset and users loosing files because folder redirection kept breaking.
£7.99 a month! How much!!!
I know apple seem like they are a rip off but with pages at £14 or what ever….
so you could pay £160 for an OEM copy that you can only install on 1 piece of kit.
Or spent 7.99 a month install it on 5 pieces and use web based solution on any pc in the world….
hmmmmmmmmmmm…….
£160 is expensive, and so is £8 a month. Compare this with Pages, or even old Office – it’s a rip-off. I pay £6 a month for Netflix, for Christ’s sake.
For home use please find the first comment, ta.
£79.99 is a lot of money for a product you don’t actually own. What happens when it gets to the 13th month. Do you need another years subscription or pay 7.99 a month.
I believe Open office costs…..Bugger all
You can either buy a block again or just keep paying the monthly fee.
Considering there’s a much lower cost of entry, you get the current version of Office, masses more features and don’t have to buy Office 2016 when it comes out; it’s pretty reasonable. Office Home & Business has an RRP of £219.99 and can only be installed on 2PCs for 1 User.
You pay your money, you take your choice.
And that’s not to mention the 20gb Skydrive and 60 free Skype minutes per month.
Clever on Microsoft’s part, most people only upgrade every second version, I’m guessing that if you work out the costs of renting for that long Microsoft would be quids in
alternatively.. find a friend who is a student or works in a school and get the full DVD coy for £35 and never have to pay for office again.
Yes i see the point you always get the latest version, but for occasional users is a waste of money. I was lucky to get mac office when i bought my Macbook. I use word about once a month and excel every 2 weeks. If i was technically minded that is a lot of £7.99 a month for occasional use. Bring on open office.
The old Office for Students scheme died a while ago. There’s a few copies around at £90 ish. The new scheme is for University students only.
There’s educational staff and student offer in the store which is £60 for a 4 year subscription. I’m happy with that!
or just torrent it for free
This micro payment thing is starting to get expensive. £5.99 for Netflix, £7.99 for Office, £10 for Spotify etc etc. These things start adding up really quickly.
Having said that its a great way to try software out, Office 2013 is going to have to be really good to convince me to keep paying rather than going back to my current version.
I might have signed up for a trial (I can’t remember lol) but I’m presented with Office Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint in my Skydrive account. Assuming I didn’t sign up for a trial/beta test etc this would make it free, yes?
Microsoft software licenzzzzzz…
flynndean will kick your arse if he reads this
Don’t worry…I wont see it. I’m too busy fapping away over SQL Server Core Licensing calculations.
Just make sure you wash your hands before meeting us Friday.
If you bought Office 2010 any time between 19th October 2012 to 30th April 2013, you can get a free upgrade to Office 2013.
Had to buy 2010 for home so just claimed my upgrade.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/offer/
Viva la revolucion!
http://www.libreoffice.org/
With LibreOffice and the like, there is no reason why a home user needs to pay for complex software that does far more than they’ll ever use.
This is a cracking deal for Students.
4 Year Subscription, with 60 minutes of Skype Credit per month… it works out to be £1.25 for the full suite. It’s a great deal for students at last!
I am not convinced a subscription model for this kind of software will work.
I shall stick with Libreoffice which is free and open source and comes with compatibility for MS Office formats anyway.
Welcome to the world of Mac.
So instead of using my copy from 2003 that’s lasted ten years and counting I should pay £80 ish for just the next year? Maybe not, cloud rubbish be damned unless they come out with a budget alternative with less bells and whistles this is gonna be more of a business customer money spinner IMHO.
I’ve had a full copy of Office Pro 2013 for about 2 weeks now. I bought it through works HUP program, for £8.95 !!!!
Oh the ribbon Im so so so very happy so happy I cant even begin to tell you, loads and loads of tiny meaningless abstract buttons taking up screen space, oh the joy the ecstasy all I need now is some live tiles to make my life complete.
Why not Corel Wordperfect?
companies need to price these things reasonably.. or else everyone will just continue pirating.. they sell millions so why make consumers pay 100s every year..
Soooooo Glad I have a Mac….
I’m glad you do too.
LOL…