# Another One Goes Subscription Only



## smoke665

They've  actually had the subscription model available for a awhile now. I switched over a couple years ago, and have no regrets. For me it's just a cost of living in today's digital world. Microsoft cuts Office 2019 one-time licenses through Home Use Program – Ars Technica


----------



## Derrel

Thank God I have no need for this program. I bought it back in 98 as a standalone and was not really in much need of it.


----------



## smoke665

Derrel said:


> Thank God I have no need for this program. I bought it back in 98 as a standalone and was not really in much need of it.



I use Excell and Word daily, so for me it's a necessity. My personal accounting software went to a subscription model last year, business accounting software might as well be as they stop supporting versions after three years. When they stop support you lose the ability to direct connect with financial institutions and brokerage firms.


----------



## 480sparky

I'm a dinosaur.  I have Office 2003.  Still vital to me, and still fully functional.


----------



## smoke665

gk fotografie said:


> For business use it might be slightly different in the USA, but in the Netherlands you - as an entrepreneur - can deduct the costs for these subscriptions, so in the end it's not really a cost.



Software purchase qualifies under section 179 for 100% deduction as an expense in 2019, subject to certain caps, that most small businesses won't reach. Monthly subscription costs for software are generally also deductible. 

However it is still a cost, you don't get a dollar for dollar credit against any tax you owe. It is an expense that reduces your taxable income. The amount you save on your taxes is dependent on your your tax rate.


----------



## vintagesnaps

I thought you were retired...? 

One more thing I don't use and don't need. I can always do a letter and email it or could do it on a typewriter (which I've thought about getting) and scan it in. My taxes are only my retirement so easy peasy to do taxes! lol I suppose if you had your own business or contracted work then it would be a lot more to keep track of.


----------



## petrochemist

gk fotografie said:


> smoke665 said:
> 
> 
> 
> They've  actually had the subscription model available for a awhile now. I switched over a couple years ago, and have no regrets. For me it's just a cost of living in today's digital world. Microsoft cuts Office 2019 one-time licenses through Home Use Program – Ars Technica
> 
> 
> 
> 
> After a computer crash a few years ago I lost my purchased Microsoft Office Suite 2010, I then switched to the free software from *Apache Open Offic*e, see: *https://www.openoffice.org/product/index.html *
> This is a good program with various options and once in awhile updates. Suddenly Microsoft started with Office 365, but I make too little use of Word, Excel etc. to spend money this way and so far I've never regretted the switch. For business use it might be slightly different in the USA, but in the Netherlands you - as an entrepreneur - can deduct the costs for these subscriptions, so in the end it's not really a cost.
Click to expand...

Exactly the same situation for me at home except I do have to use word regularly - one contact insists on sending e-mails as word attachments, even though his messages are just text.
I use Excel quite a bit more, mainly at work but it's nice to be able to read my 'photographic resources' spreadsheet at home as well


----------



## smoke665

vintagesnaps said:


> I thought you were retired...?



Retired from active day to day, but still have business interests, investments, and remain an active investor in the market. Which is why it's important to have internet connectivity to automate the exchange of information. Having to manually enter everything, pay bills, etc., would make it a day to day job for me instead a few mins.


----------



## SquarePeg

480sparky said:


> I'm a dinosaur.  I have Office 2003.  Still vital to me, and still fully functional.



_I thought my Office 2007 was prehistoric but you win!_


----------



## 480sparky

SquarePeg said:


> 480sparky said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm a dinosaur.  I have Office 2003.  Still vital to me, and still fully functional.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _I thought my Office 2007 was prehistoric but you win!_
Click to expand...


When God said, 'Let there be light!', he turned on a switch I wired for him. I also wired the factory he used to make dirt with.


----------



## Scott Whaley

I use Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint regularly.   I hate the thought of an annual subscription.


----------



## CherylL

When I had my computer built I didn't want to buy the Microsoft Office package.  I am using Word Starter.  No need for Excel.


----------



## AlanKlein

I did buy the last one when I bought my computer. Microsoft Office 2013.  

Will I be able to use this going forward?
What happens if I want to upgrade my computer if this one fails?


----------



## Dean_Gretsch

I don't know how much money the Gates' need, but I refused to subscribe for something that was always free. I have bought enough PC's over the last 25 years that I believe I have contributed enough to their wealth. Thank you @gk fotografie for posting the Apache freeware link. I am going to check them out.


----------



## SquarePeg

Dean_Gretsch said:


> I don't know how much money the Gates' need, but I refused to subscribe for something that was always free. I have bought enough PC's over the last 25 years that I believe I have contributed enough to their wealth. Thank you @gk fotografie for posting the Apache freeware link. I am going to check them out.



Welcome to capitalism.


----------



## 480sparky

AlanKlein said:


> I did buy the last one when I bought my computer. Microsoft Office 2013.
> 
> Will I be able to use this going forward?



Yep.  Although, after a while, you won't get any support or upgrades.



AlanKlein said:


> What happens if I want to upgrade my computer if this one fails?



You should already have a very reliable back-up protocol in place for your images.  Expand it to include your apps.  If your current computer fails, take the back-up hard drive to your friendly computer wiz and you'll have a new OS with your old apps up and running in no time.


----------



## Dean_Gretsch

SquarePeg said:


> Welcome to capitalism.



I liken this to going to see The Rolling Stones. I'd love to see them, but giving the price for a ticket to see a band that started out as a working person's voice, just irritates me to no end.


----------



## smoke665

AlanKlein said:


> I did buy the last one when I bought my computer. Microsoft Office 2013.
> 
> Will I be able to use this going forward?
> What happens if I want to upgrade my computer if this one fails?



That depends. I've been on the subscription plan for a couple years now, but I'm not aware of any ticking bombs in the purchased software, and since it doesn't rely on an internet connection to work, I assume it will work indefinitely. Most likely operating system or hardware upgrades will  be what kills it.


----------



## RowdyRay

gk fotografie beat me to it. I've been using Apache Open Office for about 3 years now. No complaints and does everything I need.


----------



## Original katomi

Like a lot of others, I do photography as a hobby.  I can’t afford to pay monthly for a programme that I will not use every month. I use ps9 If I upgrade I my camera then I will have to move up the pse range.


----------



## gk fotografie

petrochemist said:


> gk fotografie said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> smoke665 said:
> 
> 
> 
> They've  actually had the subscription model available for a awhile now. I switched over a couple years ago, and have no regrets. For me it's just a cost of living in today's digital world. Microsoft cuts Office 2019 one-time licenses through Home Use Program – Ars Technica
> 
> 
> 
> 
> After a computer crash a few years ago I lost my purchased Microsoft Office Suite 2010, I then switched to the free software from *Apache Open Offic*e, see: *https://www.openoffice.org/product/index.html *
> This is a good program with various options and once in awhile updates. Suddenly Microsoft started with Office 365, but I make too little use of Word, Excel etc. to spend money this way and so far I've never regretted the switch. For business use it might be slightly different in the USA, but in the Netherlands you - as an entrepreneur - can deduct the costs for these subscriptions, so in the end it's not really a cost.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Exactly the same situation for me at home except I do have to use word regularly - one contact insists on sending e-mails as word attachments, even though his messages are just text.
> I use Excel quite a bit more, mainly at work but it's nice to be able to read my 'photographic resources' spreadsheet at home as well
Click to expand...


Oh, but that's simple! My Italian teacher also has a tendency to send e-mails with Word documents and often he has also placed a photo in the text section. Simply open with Apache Office application _*Writer*_, you can also open Word (Doc. Docx. Docm.) documents very easily and quickly in Wordpad, yes indeed, from Microsoft and available for free in Windows. For creating and opening Word documents you don't need Microsoft Office Suite specifically and also not for spreadsheets etc., because Apache Office has application _*Calc *_and that works exactly the same as Microsoft Excel. With Apache Open Office you can also make presentations, drawings (application: Draw) and it contains a few more applications. I would almost say, who needs Microsoft Office Suite?


----------



## Derrel

According to an article link above Microsoft profits last year were around $11 billion . So, needless to say, they desperately need your seven dollars a month.


----------



## smoke665

@Derrel by comparison AT&T's gross profit for the 12 months ending June of this year was approaching 100 billion ($98.9b), and they are the world's worst about nickel and dime charges. The only way to thwart the blood suckers completely is to unplug from the world and live the life of Thoreau. Sometimes I think that might not be a bad idea.


----------



## Dean_Gretsch

smoke665 said:


> @Derrel by comparison AT&T's gross profit for the 12 months ending June of this year was approaching 100 billion ($98.9b), and they are the world's worst about nickel and dime charges. The only way to thwart the blood suckers completely is to unplug from the world and live the life of Thoreau. Sometimes I think that might not be a bad idea.



Ahh, but then the only way to update us on your journey would be for us _all_ to move next door, and you wouldn't really want _that. _


----------



## smoke665

@gk fotografie the US classifies most expenses as deductions, meaning it reduces taxable profit, but there is a large list of expenditures that qualify as a tax credit, meaning you deduct it from any tax you might owe (dollar for dollar). IE: Biofuel credit, expanded research credit, alternate vehicle credit, etc.


----------



## petrochemist

gk fotografie said:


> Oh, but that's simple! My Italian teacher also has a tendency to send e-mails with Word documents and often he has also placed a photo in the text section. Simply open with Apache Office application _*Writer*_, you can also open Word (Doc. Docx. Docm.) documents very easily and quickly in Wordpad, yes indeed, from Microsoft and available for free in Windows. For creating and opening Word documents you don't need Microsoft Office Suite specifically and also not for spreadsheets etc., because Apache Office has application _*Calc *_and that works exactly the same as Microsoft Excel. With Apache Open Office you can also make presentations, drawings (application: Draw) and it contains a few more applications. I would almost say, who needs Microsoft Office Suite?



Open another application instead of using the autopreview, to read what is basically a couple of paragraphs of text all formatted the same...
Not difficult but unnecessary & wasting at least 30s each time. On many occasions the title COULD say all I need from the message, (our weekly theme) except it's going to be 'Document 1'

FWIW I've been using open office for over 10 years on at least 1 computer, so I am familiar with it. Calc is NOT exactly the same as excel, it reads the same data files & does the same job but you often have to look elsewhere for functions. One one version I never did find out how to add a comment to a cell, I could edit comments in spreadsheets started in excel but not create one if there wasn't another to copy first. 

Despite the differences there will be very few who need Office instead - you don't need the 'almost'.


----------



## ac12

AlanKlein said:


> I did buy the last one when I bought my computer. Microsoft Office 2013.
> 
> Will I be able to use this going forward?
> What happens if I want to upgrade my computer if this one fails?



This all depends on the software and the vendor.
When the software "calls home" to register, when it installs, it is looking for a server to register at.
No server = no registration = software not usable.
I had that happen to me when I was reinstalling a software, and the vendor said "sorry, you have to upgrade."
So in a sense there is a "time bomb" because, once that registration server is taken down, you cannot reinstall and USE the software.

Will a "backup restore" process work, to port the installed and registered software to a new computer, I don't know.


----------



## ac12

The subscription model works when the vendor has trouble getting people to pay to upgrade to the next version. 
Many people, like me, do NOT upgrade on each release.  I will wait for every 2nd or 3rd release to upgrade.  Many companies didn't/don't upgrade on each release either.  

A CFO once told me that because his IT desktop support is contracted/outsourced, it costs him $XXX,000 in additional IT charges to upgrade anything on the computers.  So he does NOT upgrade on each release.  

An IT Director told me that he did not have the budget to train users on the new release of Office, and deal with the software changes, so he did not roll out the then new release of Office.
And this cuts the SW vendors upgrade revenue.

But that also reflects a support issue.  SW vendors do not want to keep supporting multiple old versions of their SW.  Because they have to keep those old versions installed and running.  The subscription model means that they only need to keep the current version, for most customers.


----------



## Overread

Honestly programs like Word haven't really changed a vast amount for the user and that's an issue with software companies wanting people to buy upgrades. For the vast majority of users you can easily roll all the way back to Word 95 (and possibly before then) and it would still do most of everything you need and it would STILL have a hissy fit if you start putting images into it and moving them around (I learned long ago, if the document is going to have more than 1 picture, just make the picture pages their own word document otherwise any editing takes a million times longer as images jump around when text expands/contracts before it in the document). 

Sure the back end changes to keep compatible with new operating systems and hardware; a few refinements to the software take place and a few fringe features get added; more fonts and such and a few more save formats. But by and large it remains the same. Sometimes they get away with big updates which are cosmetic (I still HATE their shift away from menus and into the icon rich interface they use now - the fact that Excel (the professional software) still uses the old style does strongly suggest to me that for word and others it was purely cosmetic with no user bonus and likely a user detriment). 

So on the one hand you've software that needs updates to stay current. Another is that, as noted in this thread, some see Word and such as free software that came on their computer when they bought it. They don't see it as a purchase because its always been bundled into the computer from day 1. Just like most people don't realise that you do buy the operating system (windows) as well. Again its paid for, you just don't see it when you buy the computer (salesmen are more likely to focus on the graphics card or the processor, which do typically cost way more anyway). 


I dislike lots of subscriptions appearing in life because the combined costs can actually mount up pretty fast and you can't buy out of them so easily. One or two things at £10 a month isn't bad, but you could easily wind up with 5 or more bits of software and then you're starting to creep toward £100 a month on software subscriptions. Suddenly the individual money saving starts to lose ground against the combined monthly costs. 

Of course there are other options - Open Office is a neat option for providing you most of the MS Office software. Indeed if your office uses open office or you are working alone then its super easy and free legally. However I've found that trying to swap  between the two throws up problems. For example it took me ages to get images to appear in Word which were there in Open Office but vanish when saved as a word document and opened in word (I can't even remember how I did it last time). What should have been a 5 second document opening turned into a nightmare of problem solving. 


I can see a time when businesses do have to consider providing employees home as well as workplace subscription packages for key software if they expect employees to ever take work home with them in any capacity; or to be able to review work at home. 

MS has also had some trouble with the EU because of competition laws tryign to crack down on monopolies - though thus far at a practical sense I don't think its really had much impact all told. At least at the user level. 


In the end software subscriptions are great for developers. They retain control over their product; they can lower their support costs because now all their supported users are on the same version; they can keep income coming at a steady continual rate rather than in random fits and spurts (often after massive investments in marketing); subscribed users are more likely to be retained as users, esp if there's little competition and little transfer ability between competing software brands. Plus it helps them crack down on casual piracy and software "loaning" between friends and such. It won't stop the hard core priates and pirate software users; but all those "hey I'll loan you my disk" situations vanish overnight. Indeed it can lead to a big piracy software crackdown.


----------



## ac12

Agree.
For much of what I do, BASIC Word is fine, and going back to Word and Excel 95 would probably work.
It is the old 80:20 rule.  80% of my requirements is met by just 20% of the functionality.

As long as I don't have to work on a client's computer, running a  different version.
Even now when I have to help a friend running Office 2007, that is painful, because of the UI change from 2007 to 2010 (which I am happily running).  And I recall my IT director saying similar from 2003 to 2007.


----------



## Overread

Yeh the UI changes are a nightmare because most of the time in software like word they just weren't needed and you can tell that because Excel kept its interface pretty much the same for a very long time (I've not used it recently so I don't know if they've gone in and mucked it up too). But Word was the family software whilst Excel was the pro one so for some reason family people need big shiny bright buttons that don't really tell you what something is until the tooltip pops up. 

For me its painful because I know the software can do things but I can't find them to do it; however for those who get used to a system and are not adaptive to software changes (there are still people where if the icon moves or changes appearance on the desktop they get lost) its a nightmare. Heck when MS got rid of the start button menu that was a disaster of a choice. I honestly believe they've either got new students with changes just because its change for a dissertation in their team or they are changing just to produce change. Whatever the reason some of their interface choices just make no sense.


----------



## smoke665

The big thing for business integrated  software was and still is support, even for those with in-house IT. You might slide by on relatively inexpensive software, but when you start spending,  five, six digits or more for a complex integrated package the support becomes a major element. In some cases because of the high initial outlays financing was required, which on a  intangible asset meant  high interest, and monthly payments. Then it wasn't unusual after spending thousands, to have to also buy a monthly service contract, for support. Finally throw in the fact that a lot of software didn't perform as promised or expected, leaving you with a worthless outlay which if you financed you were still making payments on.  Businesses soon discovered that it was cleaner to expense the monthly expense of the software and support, you didn't tie up large sums up front or add liability to your balance sheet and if the software didnt perform, you had a quicker out. Before I sold out in 2007 many of the more expensive packages our industry used, were being offered on a subscription plan that included ongoing support. For us and others like us it was an ideal arrangement.


----------



## ac12

One of the problem with a UI change is the documentation and user familiarity.
I used to work for a SW company, and I used to complain to the developers when they changed the menu.
Because the documentation was based on the menu path, when they changed the menu, the documentation was not correct.  So we had to find and correct all those places in the documentation that used the menu paths that changed.  

Then as a user, you had to find where in the menu, the developers moved the function to.  
Because, they rarely document to the public, in an easily found document, where they moved a function.  So we are left to manually search the menu to look for it, which is sometime easy to find, and sometime HARD to find.  Then you have to retrain your brain, to use the new menu path.

Sometimes I think they change things just to make a change.
"We updated the menu in the new version."
And what was wrong with the old menu?   Nothing.


----------



## Overread

I've also noticed that they move things around so they can removed features as well. Word used to have document binding which was a really neat feature where you'd have a single file on the desktop, but when you opened it Word would have multiple separate files within it, all bound with a little menu on the side so that you could flick between them. It was great for making a single document with many parts because you could split it down so that each chapter was its own section and thus edits to one part wouldn't have a roll-on effect onto other bits. You could add and remove huge chunks from the early part and the order and layout of the latter would remain the same. It was also great for any images because you could give them their own page etc..

This is long before the toolbar stacked files from the same application in a list-  instead it just made more and more tabs so if you were doing any research or such you could fast end up with a very cluttered toolbar. I still miss it, it was a neat little feature. 

However I suspect many never knew it was there and once they'd moved the menus around the lost feature wasn't noticed as much.


----------



## ac12

Overread said:


> I've also noticed that they move things around so they can removed features as well. Word used to have document binding which was a really neat feature where you'd have a single file on the desktop, but when you opened it Word would have multiple separate files within it, all bound with a little menu on the side so that you could flick between them. It was great for making a single document with many parts because you could split it down so that each chapter was its own section and thus edits to one part wouldn't have a roll-on effect onto other bits. You could add and remove huge chunks from the early part and the order and layout of the latter would remain the same. It was also great for any images because you could give them their own page etc..
> 
> This is long before the toolbar stacked files from the same application in a list-  instead it just made more and more tabs so if you were doing any research or such you could fast end up with a very cluttered toolbar. I still miss it, it was a neat little feature.
> 
> However I suspect many never knew it was there and once they'd moved the menus around the lost feature wasn't noticed as much.



I did not, and it sounds like it would have been a cool thing to use.


----------



## smoke665

Overread said:


> . Word used to have document binding which was a really neat feature where you'd have a single file on the desktop, but when you opened it Word would have multiple separate files within it, all bound with a



It's been awhile since I used it, but I believe the feature you are referring to is now called Master Document/subdocument. Here's  a video discussing how to set it up, it isn't that difficult.


----------



## ebyelyakov

Unfortunately for M$ there are many decent alternatives to its Office Suite. Unlike the Photoshop


----------

