Phew, this was a good reminder since I was meaning to cancel my subscription anyway. It was going to auto renew in 2 days. 😬
Preaching to the choir here but LibreOffice has been excellent since my MSOffice license expired. Unless you’re working in an enterprise setting with MS-specific macros or online collaboration, there’s no reason to be paying for basic document editing software in 2025.
There are also self-hosted and open-sourced collaborative editing suites available that I haven’t tried yet, but there are plenty of options
Does it save files locally or only cloud? I want to move away from google docs/sheets.
I think locally only, LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.
Even if you need microsoft office for some random file you can use their free web version. Well it’s been a couple years since I last needed it I’m assuming it still exists
Fair enough, but if you’re trying to avoid data collection then open-sourced projects are preferable
This is like adding ESPN to the live TV package.
So glad I never had to deal with cable, or internet companies.
Just $25/month with Visible and I have unlimited data with tethering.
I’m so glad I work in an industry where I can get away with using Libre Office.
Make it too expensive and people will switch to Google docs.
Excel is the deal breaker on that. My last company was all Google products and auth, but I still had to buy Excel for the accounting and HR teams.
Um excel certainly has its places, but accounting? Don’t they have actual dedicated software for accounting? HR? Like payroll? Again don’t they have actual software for that?
And I was thinking personal use, whose costs were posted. $100 a year, fuck that.
It’s hard to believe, but I work at a Fortune 100 company that’s still heavily reliant on Excel.
Sure, we have specific software as System of Record (Oracle suite, mainly). But for all the day to day estimating and calculating and reporting and other noodling, people routinely export to Excel and play with numbers from there.
The point is you can use google docs or Libreoffice for day to day mundane things.
It’s only the huge power features that you need Excel for, maybe in engineering. For accounting when you get to that power feature point I’m surprised there isn’t dedicated software.
Excel is a spreadsheet, and spreadsheets like Excel are first and foremost aimed at accounting sort of tasks. Whether they actually need Excel versus something like Google Docs or Libreoffice is another thing. The big thing with Excel is that it gets used (and abused) to do things that it’s not really intended for doing such as those spreadsheets that are full of macros trying to be an application, or those spreadsheets that are trying to be a database, and so forth.
From an engineering perspective, I find Excel to be annoying because it’s clearly first and foremost an accounting tool, and some of its behaviors like the way it rounds numbers and tries to turn everything into a date is downright obnoxious. I still use it from time to time for quick and dirty things like whipping up a couple of plots quickly (and this doesn’t really need Excel… but at work all the computers have Excel), but otherwise for anything more complicated I’d probably switch to something else.
Like it’s a fun number cruncher, but for serious accounting that’s tied into point of sale, accounts receivable, accounts payable, etc you really should be running something dedicated. That’s why there are all these software companies making bank when from the outside you can’t quite figure out what they do.
Protip on excel, when you start a new sheet ctrl+a, ctrl+1, change to number.
See you think that - but excel finds a way. We have what are lovingly called the “spreadsheets of doom” which accounting uses to manage all forecasts, and the bits that involve money flows. Did you know you can hook excel into Salesforce and pull all the sales records? A person who thinks her monitor is her computer (she has a Dell laptop) somehow found a way…
I remember my dad had a problem and asked if he had to take the monitor or the tower to the shop.
Google workspace just pulled the same crap with Gemini
The point is it’s free.
Last week at us.
First question I asked the evil twin was: “How can I deactivate Gemini and never hear from it again?” Support article poped up, where must opt out from some Labs setting or some bs, but only a workspace admin can do it.
Ended up with blocking that flare button with uBo. Problem solved.
The fact it costs anything at all, let alone a subscription, should be enough for the working class to seek other options.
This generation has sold itself out to the lowest bidder.
Makes me glad I continue to use the free Google and MS Office options and keep my cloud storage with a service that is dedicated to just storage.
Cuts down on all of the forced price increases due to the AI mess the MBAs need to justify the expense of.
The fact that people are subscribing to office software is the biggest problem here. What sort of technical breakthroughs require so many updates that a subscription is necessary?
Excel has most businesses in a headlock. Can’t see why anyone else pays for M$. I have Office, but it’s a permanent license from my last job. When I upgrade, say bye bye.
Exactly, the only reason I have the subscription is for Excel and OneDrive. My NAS and home network is still not good enough to cover the backup needs of my whole family.
They need money to fix all the exploits in that spaghetti software.
money to fix all the exploits in that spaghetti software.
This decade for SURE! We promise!
As much as they are pushing to stop 1 time purchases of office, they do still offer it. I purchased a license for like $20 off a discount site for Office 2021, and i have no clue why people need a subscription plan for this. It would take some very specific needs for that to ever be needed and I’m sure a huge percentage would be just fine with the 1 time purchase that lasts 3-4 years of support.
As for businesses that part stinks… once you get integrated with all the services offered, it’s going to take a lot to back out since it’s not just office they are probably subscribed to but everything else that enterprise has to offer. They are absolutely banking on people to suck it up and accept the position they are in and give in. It’s awful, but at the same time if your business went all in and didn’t anticipate this then they didn’t do their job if you ask me when vetting everything. This feels similar to the recent buyout of VMware and are now pushing insane new license costs. The problem is they went to high where despite the effort it will take to change products people have to. We can only hope Microsoft is on the edge of crossing that line.
the technical breakthrough of increasing shareholder value
Privacy-stealing telemetry changes often, so the subscription is to make sure that’s updated and works. You gotta pay for the privilege of being datarummaged by the likes of Microsoft The Great.
It is. Remember when they just made a new version every 3 years and you didn’t REALLY need to buy the latest one if you had the previous one?
Well that didn’t make them enough money.
They still do that, though.
Yes, but you have to know that they do. They only advertise 365 on their website.
Fun story, it’s called office 365 as when you see the price you’ll turn 365 degrees and walk away.
Ok that doesn’t really work but God I love that stupid joke.
Anyway I haven’t used office personally for ages and never seem to run into real compatibility issues with the meager personal/business overlap in my situation.
It made me chuckle a little imaging that you do a full 365 degree spin Infront of Microsoft and then walk away (in an awkward way), instead of 180 degrees to walk the opposite direction haha
365 spin, then realizing your mistake and awkwardly walking backwards out of the room
Technically speaking with 365* of rotation if you are far enough away you will be able to walk past microsoft, so this is possible.
Because of the Earth’s curvature you mean?
No not the curvature. For every one degree off you are of a target at 60 miles away you will miss your target by one mile. So if you were 60 miles from your target and you rotated 365, you would miss it by 5 miles. Hence you could spin 365 and miss it, if you were far enough away.
You mean you could accidentally spin 364.9° or 365.1° instead of 365° exactly and you’d be off by a large amount? Might be dumb but still not getting how a perfect pivot right back to 0°/365° would still miss!
Because a perfect circle is 360* not 365 so you would be 5* off perfect thereby miss by 5 miles at 60 miles distance.
God damn I am dumb. Thanks for spelling it out lol!
At the right distance it’s just enough pivot to give them a spiteful shoulder check on the way out.
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They should have made it opt-in instead of opt-out IMHO. You can still get the old subscription when you renew, but you have to jump through a couple of hoops. If you do nothing you just get “upgraded” for no reason.
Dolla dolla bill.
apparently super easy to get it forever free
Not if you’re a company, since in order for it to remain free you need to disable certain telemetry files, and in some office there’s bound to be a person fucking things up, and then you’re on the hook big time.
Clippy is back!
If they dressed it up as Clippy I wouldn’t be mad, tbh.
GOZER The choice is made. The Traveller has come. VENKMAN We didn't choose anything?!! I didn't think of an image, did you? SPENGLER No. WINSTON My mind's a total void! [They all look at Ray] RAY I couldn't help it! It just popped in there! VENKMAN What? What just popped in there?
SPENGLER I have a radical idea... The door swings both ways. We could reverse the particle flow through the gate... RAY How? SPENGLER ... we'll resize a table in Word VENKMAN Excuse me, Egon. You said resizing a table was bad... RAY [with realisation] ... resize the table... VENKMAN You're going to endanger us. You're going to endanger our client; the nice lady who paid us in advance before she turned into a dog SPENGLER Not necessarily. There's definitely a very slim chance we'll survive.. WINSTON ... RAY ... VENKMAN I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it! Let's do it!
It looks like you’re summoning a minor demon!
I spent about 20 minutes today trying to get Copilot on Word to tell me how to disable Copilot on Word. Worth every penny.
The clippy we all deserved
Just call the sales team and get the classic plan. No more having to deal with Copilot and you get the old price back.
First thing I do with the Google Assistent on Android Phones is to tell it to disable itself. Cool thing is that it does.
You can do that??
I really wonder what their long term plan is here.
Hardly anyone really wants copilot, it doesn’t add a lot of value, yet makes the product less competitive.
I totally get rent seeking, Office is so ingrained that it’s almost impossible to get away from it. But why force AI on everybody? Why not add it as a bonus?
Is this just a desperate attempt to soften the massive losses of the AI investment?
To please the shareholders. Then, when AI is no longer deemed valuable and its tremendous costs sink in, they will remove it and layoff the teams that worked on it, to please the shareholders.
But they’ll keep the prices high
That’s way too simplistic, as often.
For the shareholders, having an investment of several billions turn into an unwanted add-on for a few dollars is not a good thing. It’s the opposite, almost like a fire sale.
It’s not for you. It’s for them. Copilot digests everything you type into the Office apps, and it provides them with millions of real writing examples that are free from copyright (read the new Office EULA).
And then what? Also, that won’t be legal in the EU.
I mean, you take billions of dollars to develop an AI to put into a product you already have, making it less competitive in the process to … develop a slightly better AI maybe?
Where exactly is the return on investment here?
Why would this not be legal in EU if the conditions of using the copilot are clearly stated in the agreement? GDPR etc is mostly just that: requirement for clear language + informed consent.
I don’t disagree [with your comment (I absolutely disagree with what ms is doing)].
However, like with all technology in the past, where the civilian market received the obsolete military technologies (think, internet, cellphones, gps, and wifi), the consumer facing LLM/AI capabilities are likely nowhere near what the bleeding edge is in the military sector. The consumer facing Copilot is a product to make it “legal enough” to harvest your data, and the EULA people agreed to without reading is the nail on the coffin in that defense. The end product has nothing to do with copilot, office, or even us civilians. We’re just the vehicle.
[Edit in brackets]
The AI hardware isn’t for us. It’s for Google and Microsoft, so they can steal your computer’s CPU time and hard drive space so they can build their own personal Skynets. (Same thing with CoPilot, which requires 50gigs of your hard drive space. You’re also paying for the privilege of being spied on, which is nice for them, I guess.)
For existing customers, the price hike won’t be kicking in until plan renewal, and there are options to downgrade the plan. Those who want to avoid using AI can downgrade the plan to the “Classic” or “Basic” Microsoft 365 plans.
Thankfully we can roll back to the “Classic Family Plan” without the AI features. But annoying that they automatically switched plans and I had to switch back. If I didn’t see this article I’d be up for a big price hike when it renewed.
But annoying that they automatically switched plans and I had to switch back.
Should be illegal.
Everyone experiencing this should be thinking “man, I gotta ditch Microsoft before they try to fuck me again”
Absolutely. This has made me acutely aware that my days with MS are numbered.
NO one using Microsoft is doing so by choice. If we haven’t learned in 30 years, then fuck us.
Their office suite is still the winner.
Not really. Office software has reached diminishing returns over a decade ago.
Nah, it’s all hinges on Excel. It’s still unbeatable at this point.
Wow Lotta folks gonna discover that LibreOffice is much better than MS Office. Not to mention, free.
If they actually bundled a game pass subscription with it and made a proper Microsoft complete subscription they could have softened the bad press they’re getting on this (and giving customers something they’ve wanted for a while)
That and the fact that they’ve nearly doubled the price of the subscription to add a limited credit based feature just looks pretty slimy
bundled a game pass subscription
Most of the money MS gets from Office365 is from business users, not home users. I have a feeling that trying to sell game pass to corporate clients isn’t going to be a huge hit…
Sure and it would be silly to mess with the professional tiers
But personal and family subscriptions are fairly squarely positioned towards non-business users as their main demographics, from what I can see.
Why on earth would they bundle gamepass into Office365? Office365 is pretty much used for business and educational institutions. Everybody else is a rounding error.
The overlap between Office365 owners and Xbox gamers is extremely small.
You’d just end up pissing everybody off by combining them
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“They’ve added how much to the price by adding this gamer nonsense?! I don’t need that crap, I want office software!”
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“They’ve added how much to the price by including fucking PowerPoint and Outlook?! I don’t need that crap, I want to play games!”
And not to defend MS, but a 43% increase isn’t nearly doubling. A 100% increase would be doubling.
It’s called Microsoft 365 now
Office 365 was when it was just a business productivity suite
They renamed it when they pivoted it to a general subscription and started adding things like clipchamp.
I mentioned in another comment though that I agree it would be silly to mess with the professional skus, but the home & family ones would make perfect sense to offer as an option at the very least (just as they’re offering 365 without copilot for the time being).
I’m also not saying get rid of the independent subscriptions for Xbox, that would also be silly.
Just that a merged one would make a lot of sense for the people out there paying for both (which I reckon is a good number in the family subscription category at least)
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