Microsoft Office

[Alexis Jackson]

I bought a laptop with lifetime licensed of Microsoft office for $114.22. It is worth it or I should have settled with cracked versions. Thanks

[JackoUK]

If you bought a laptop with an Office 2019 perpetual license for $114 then very well done!

Let us know where and we might even join you.

 

I think you will find people herein do not settle for cracked anything.

I think the subscription cost of Office 365 for a family with several devices is good value ...

… but the perpetual offering for an individual is effectively a 4-fold increase from the old scheme with Office 2010 where it used to be £85 for 3 devices and now is £112 for just 1.

[JackoUK]

There will always be a certain tension between greedy consumers who do not want to pay anything at all and greedy corporations who want to exploit the public ...

… but a thoughtful approach can produce a high-value, legal result which I believe is the ethos of this forum.

Are any of us in the capitalist West totally blameless? No.

 

Take MSFT.

When you buy a machine from a tier 1 OEM the Windows Home license contributes about $45 to the cost. That's a pretty good deal. The upgrade from Windows 7/8 to 10 was free - a nice bonus for loyal customers. There are free evaluation copies for Window 10 client and server … and the Windows Insider programme. So for operating systems I think MSFT offers very good value.

In contrast MSFT's handling of storage has been a disaster, especially their withdrawn unlimited cloud/Office option. However the HSS forum has many ways to avoid cloud storage altogether, so this isn't a problem - we simply ignore the large corporates for home storage solutions.

As I have already mentioned the Office 365 offering is great value for a family … but hopeless for individuals. While I wish MSFT would offer an Office 365 option at $20 p.a. for an individual … they don't. But taken in the round I paid £85 (UK) for two Windows 2010 and one 2013 Office perpetual licenses in 2012 and £112 for a single Office 2019 perpetual in 2019. Combined over nearly 10 years that's still pretty decent (but I am watching the unwanted switch to high cost subscriptions).

 

In January this year I installed a free version of Macrium Reflect on my new machine to help build it.

 

I am experimenting with darktable (instead of Adobe's Lightroom) which is a highly-functional, free, open-source application.

 

There are still lots of high-value, low-(no)cost applications in the Windows ecosystem.

 

Guess what I'm saying is - look at the overall picture and put together a genuine system.

 

Edited January 29, 2019 by JackoUK