Microsoft Details Pricing for Office 365 Subscriptions
Office 2010 upgrade offer starts next month.
As if Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, and Windows Phone 8 weren't enough, Microsoft is also preparing to launch Office 2013. Redmond today detailed pricing for its software suite, talking new subscriptions for Office 365 as well as pricing for standalone purchases of Office 2013.
First up is the single subscription to Office 365 Home Premium, which covers an entire household. Each user will be able to sign in with his or her Microsoft account (which means access to documents and personalized settings) and one subscription provides access for up to five machines (Mac or PC). This subscription will be available across 227 markets worldwide (online and in-store) for $99.99 billed per year. Aside from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher, Office 365 Home Premium will also net you 20GB of SkyDrive storage, 60 minutes of Skype world calling per month, and continuous updates.
Microsoft is also offering Office 365 Small Business Premium, which is aimed at businesses with less than 10 employees. This will cover up to five machines (again, PC or Mac) for access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher plus Lync. There's also a 25GB Outlook mailbox, 10GB of cloud storage for the company and 500MB per user, the ability to host online meetings, and the ability to set up, build and maintain a website with no additional hosting fees.
If subscriptions aren't your thing, you can always grab Microsoft's suite of productivity tools in the more traditional form of Office 2013. Prices start at $139.99 for Office Home and Student 2013, both of which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Office Home and Business 2013 include all the applications in Home and Student with Outlook thrown in on top while Office Professional 2013 includes the applications in Home and Business with Access and Publisher on top.
Lastly, starting next month, anyone purchasing Office 2012 or Office for Mac 2011 will qualify for one free year of Office 365 Home Premium or the equivalent Office 2013 offering, when it becomes available. This upgrade deal will kick in on October 19.
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140$ is steep though, many people will go with Libre Office instead; 80$ would be fine with me.
No kidding - it's WAY too bright, and hurts my eyes. If it let you choose the color (or picked the one from your Windows theme), that would be better. Not to mention how ridiculous their pricing is - $150 for 3 PCs is fine; $140 for one is NOT. And I'm not willing to use a subscription service either. I guess it's Office 2010 for me then.
I don't agree, i use libre at my workplace everyday and its buggy as hell.
At least 3 times a day i just hangs up, and there is a office.bin file in task manager which you have to delete and then restart the program for it to work again.
Microsoft office doesn't have stupid bugs like these.
Libreoffice is free and open source. If you see a bug report it and help the community on delivering a free product. Otherwise, pay for Microsoft Office.
On my experience though, Libreoffice is quite stable. I recommend 3.5.0 or later. I stopped using Office and so did my family, and no one complains.
the whole suite of libreoffice is completely free, which is much powerful than the version MS provide. and one thing i like- libreoffice, firefox uses the menu style i used to.
i do notice the libreoffice latest version 3.6 is not stable with old winxp, go back to version 3.5 is ok.
latest version of gimp is not stable with xp too, go back to one version earlier is fine.
win8RT for ARM devices will have 'a version' of office that will be similar to home and student, but not be fully featured, and designed even more around a touch interface
For home use I would say that Libre/Open Office is just fine (I use it on a few of my systems), but when it comes to a business enviornment using massive spreadsheets, databases, locked custom documents that need to also be shared... well Libre can do it... but it is so much simpler to pay a few $$ and get MS office.
However, Libre Office's version of PPT (called Presenter I think??) is so much better than MS PPT that I cannot begin to describe how awesome it is... PPT has always felt like the red-headed step child of office. It is highly necessary, and there is a very large fan base that uses it on a daily basis that would kill MS employees if major changes were made in it's functionaltiy... but the damn thing is just not functional and there are so many better products out there that nobody uses.
Agreed, I used the beta for a bit, and while it was not all-together bad (and has some better features for OneNote Access and Excel), the whole not having a black/dark theme makes it very difficult to work with for long periods of time. No features so compelling that I feel a need to upgrade from 2007... and really the only reason for me to personally move from office XP was because of all the annoyance of doc vs docX... well and finally having a dictionary in word was a nice plus.
Free game console every time you do a refresh (even a minor refresh) with all the bells and whistles (4 controllers, kinnect, large HDD etc.), and a free replacement every time it breaks (excluding user wear and tear of course)
xbox live gold family membership
$250 Rebate to go towards a windows phone or tablet every 2 years per family member
Office365 with 100GB of Skydrive storage
Current local copy of Office Home and Student with every release (up to 2 per household member)
Current copies of Windows OS for all my home computers with every release (up to 2 copies per household member)
Zune music pass for everyone in the family
10% off at all MS owned stores (xbox market place, games for windows, metro store, etc.)
For all of this, I would be willing to pay $40-50/mo (~$480-600/year) per adult/teen in the house.
I am not a fan of a subscription services. But if you are willing to help keep me current on all major software and hardware (on mobile and game systems at least), and provide a rich ecosystem that has a lot of content within said ecosystem, then I am willing to convert and do more business with you.
Oh, and the same goes for Apple or Google: Give me current devices (even if I have to pay a little extra for higher end devices), free in-house content/software, rich all-you-can-eat web services, and discounts on 3rd party software/services and I'll be more than happy to pay a pretty penny, and convert the whole household over to your products.
But I am not interested in buying into a subscription system that is 'just office' or 'just games' or 'just music'. Such plans are well and good within their own right, but if I am only getting a single service, then I would rather buy the product outright and be done with it. Provide me with a complete and rich ecosystem, and then I'll be interested in paying monthly/yearly fees.
Microsoft need to step up the game if they still expect people to pay money for a document software.
Right, because that's all we need in life, another monthly payment. In fact that's all it seems to be coming to anymore. Work like dog to afford the next months set of payments for crap you don't need, or in some cases even want. SaaS will utterly fail in the consumer market. These businesses think they see untapped dollar signs. Nobody in the consumer market will want to rent software for the same price that they used to buy it for. Microsoft can suck it.
My new Android phone has almost the same resolution as my 4 year old ThinkPad. Whats taking so long?
Libreoffice/TDF is working on an Android port. I suspect we'll be able to test it by the end of the year or so.
Anyone as in home user or small business that pays MS for their crap are fools.
Oh wait, yes I can.
you shouldn't think. or confuse dreams with reality
At least the notepad evolved since win7.