PSA - Microsoft Office price increase

[Writer61]

I've got the fear that they are now watching my every move and they're going to delete all my accounts, but I figured out how to back it up easily after each writing session so we are officially back

Of course they are. But what makes you think that they won't connect your use of, say, LibreOffice to write smut for Lietrotica and your oh, so well-behaved use of Office for work? Mwahahaha, etc.

The bigger issue of a "smut account" might come if you ever want to visit the US with its proposed visa regulations.

 

[Actingup]

I like LaTeX all the more these days.

Just watch out for hives or other allergic reactions.

 

[onehitwanda]

Just watch out for hives or other allergic reactions.

There's a cream for that.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

LibreOffice works fine if you don't want to do any complex formatting and have it play nicely with Word. Some life admin docs I end up opening on my work machine which has MS Office. GoogleDocs is OK but I've had to create a new account as my first one is full.

Anything to do with Lit will be on WriterPad or LibreOffice. I used to get given versions of MS products from the Middle East where copyright law allegedly doesn't exist - the whole region sailing high seas, probably. Wouldn't mind a new copy of Photoshop, as I learnt to use it last century.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

The only subscription software I run is a music composition package, Sebelius, and that's only because I really can't justify the cost of the perpetual license version for as little as I do in it.

Sibelius, after the composer. So-called simply because he was the founders' favourite composer, and not, as many people assumed, because they were the Finn brothers - the bad pun didn't dawn on them until it was pointed out years later. They also often forgot to mention to people who only worked with one of them that they were identical twins, causing much confusion. Good guys, though. And software.

 

[onehitwanda]

Sibelius, after the composer.

who created one of the most amazing and poignant choral works ever, the Finlandia.

 

[Actingup]

who created one of the most amazing and poignant choral works ever, the Finlandia.

"Finland, behold, thy daylight now is dawning,
the threat of night has now been driven away.
The skylark calls across the light of morning,
the blue of heaven lets it have its way,
and now the day the powers of night is scorning:
thy daylight dawns, O Finland of ours!

Finland, arise, and raise towards the highest
thy head now crowned with mighty memory.
Finland, arise, for to the world thou criest
that thou hast thrown off thy slavery,
beneath oppression´s yoke thou never liest.
Thy morning´s come, O Finland of ours!"
(Translation of V.A. Koskenniemi's text: source https://finland.fi/arts-culture/finlandia-by-jean-sibelius/)

 

[MrPixel]

who created one of the most amazing and poignant choral works ever, the Finlandia.

Oh, yeah.

50 years ago, in my alter ego as a professional tuba player, I was performing Finlandia with a 45-piece community orchestra. Fair enough. However, that same season I was also playing with a 150-piece orchestra of hugely talented young performers, with our main concert at a major big city venue. This second group wasn't performing Finlandia, but several significant modern works including Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, a very powerful work, and there were other very powerful works on the program.

Long story short, the little orchestra's concert was a week after the big one's. Tuba part in Finlandia is a very exposed ff. Fine, I was in my moment, so I let it all out. At ff for the big orchestra in a huge space. That corresponded to fffffff for the little orchestra in a college multipurpose room. Conductor was jumping up and down on the podium convincing me to back off, as I was all but blowing the little orchestra off the stage and rattling the ceiling tiles.

Fond memories. Mr. Helder, I apologize. Sometimes I didn't know my own strength.

 

[NotWise]

who created one of the most amazing and poignant choral works ever, the Finlandia.

Finlandia is one of my favorite pieces, but I think that's the first time I've heard the choral part. It's usually recorded without it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I like LaTeX all the more these days.

Yes but we're talking about software here.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yes but we're talking about softwear here.

Fixed that for you, to align with Wanda's post.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Subscription? Surely once you've purchased the software there are no further payments unless you decide to try a newer version? I can't remember the last time I used any MS Office products, but probably around 2008/2009. Depending on which desktop/laptop/tablet I'm using I will use OpenOffice, LibreOffice or AndrOffice.

MS try very hard to push an annual subscription model (Office 365), but as of earlier this year it was still possible to buy a single-machine license that doesn't require ongoing subs. It does mean needing to buy separate licenses for my two devices and again each time I replace one, but I think it still works out marginally cheaper than 365.

It does mean I don't automatically get new features, but currently that's a good thing.

(I'd happily go LibreOffice or something, but I actually do need MS Word for publishing-industry stuff.)

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is running a prosecution against them in Australia for misleading customers on this one. See if you can find a 'classic subscription' option that removes copilot.

Bless the ACCC and all who sail in her.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I'm not sure how widespread (across regions) this will be, but I recently got an email from Microsoft to say that they are putting the price of Office 365 up by 50% in the new year (February).

As I suspect quite a few people here use MS Word, I just thought I would let people know to check and see if their subscriptions were about to go up.

A few months ago I was looking for an alternative to MS Word, as it produces extremely messy results if you try to pass it through a Markup translator. Luckily, a few people here recommended LibreOffice and their Writer app. Since then I've found I actually prefer writing in LO Writer compared to Word.

Initially I was going to let my Microsoft Office subscription ride, as I use Excel and Powerpoint quite a lot as part of my (real) job. However, after checking out LibreOffice Calc and Impress, I'm actually pleasantly surprised how capable they are. As a result I've now cancelled my MS Office subscription.

Just posting this in case anyone else notices their Microsoft subscriptions suddenly shooting up, and if they are, then maybe take a look at LibreOffice, you might be surprised.

I got an email offering a 50% discount for the first year for upgrading to premium. No mention of the cost if I stay with my current plan.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Don’t subscribe to software – it only encourages them. (I suggest you also avoid subscription features in your motor vehicles, home appliances, and whatever else they taint next.)

If you must use MS Word, then the Macworld shop have been spamming me with big discounts on Office 2019 (US$20), Office 2021 (US$30), Visio (US$10), and Win11 (US$12). All permanent licenses, no 365.

I suggest you don’t create a Microsoft account either. Lookup how to install Windows with a local account only. Then lock down all the privacy settings.

 

[alohadave]

Don’t subscribe to software – it only encourages them. (I suggest you also avoid subscription features in your motor vehicles, home appliances, and whatever else they taint next.)

If you must use MS Word, then the Macworld shop have been spamming me with big discounts on Office 2019 (US$20), Office 2021 (US$30), Visio (US$10), and Win11 (US$12). All permanent licenses, no 365.

I suggest you don’t create a Microsoft account either. Lookup how to install Windows with a local account only. Then lock down all the privacy settings.

Thanks for this. Office 2021 was $40. Simple process if you already have a 365 account.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Thanks for this. Office 2021 was $40. Simple process if you already have a 365 account.

Those discounts seem to fluctuate week-to-week.

Note that these are ‘machine locked’ licenses. Or maybe only Office 2019 is, but Office 2021 requires an account for the ‘AI integration’ stuff? I’m not sure. I only use LibreOffice.

Make sure you also check out the cloud storage deals. I recently purchased ‘lifetime’ 20TB from Internxt for US$390. EU-based, GDPR compliant, Zero Knowledge, lifetime cloud storage for less than I’d pay for a 12TB hard drive.

Koofr’s lifetime 1TB (US$130) also seems good (similar privacy), if you just want some offsite backup of your stories. Or MEGA.io will give you 20GB for free, which is a good way to start experimenting with encrypted remote storage.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

I'd happily go LibreOffice or something, but I actually do need MS Word for publishing-industry stuff.

If the 'publishing industry', which isn't a homogenous body, are so stuck in the past that they haven't moved to OpenDocument yet, don't worry. LibreOffice will save in Word's .doc format.

 

[MrPixel]

‘lifetime’

Theirs, or yours? Photobucket. And... my gosh... Google's constant tomfoolery. EULAs are notoriously malleable.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Theirs, or yours? Photobucket. And... my gosh... Google's constant tomfoolery. EULAs are notoriously malleable.

I'm expecting the service 'lifetime' to exceed the ~5-year life of a Winchester drive.

I'm not relying on the cloud as my only copy - it is just my remote backup. (Although, it's also convenient to access stuff like old 4K drone footage when I'm on the road with only my phone.)

 

[alohadave]

Note that these are ‘machine locked’ licenses. Or maybe only Office 2019 is, but Office 2021 requires an account for the ‘AI integration’ stuff? I’m not sure. I only use LibreOffice.

Yeah, that's fine. I use it on my desktop, and don't use the cloud features.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If the 'publishing industry', which isn't a homogenous body,

(Nor did I suggest that it was.)

are so stuck in the past that they haven't moved to OpenDocument yet, don't worry. LibreOffice will save in Word's .doc format.

(Speaking of "stuck in the past", .docx replaced .doc as the default file format for Word more than 19 years ago.)

Yes, LibreOffice will save to both .doc and .docx; no, the fact that two products will save to the same file format doesn't mean that they are 100% interchangeable or compatible.

For most users this is ignorable, because most of the work on compatibility is directed at the most commonly-used functionality. If what you want to do with a word processor is write TPS reports or erotica and apply some basic styling/etc., I expect you can do it in any major word processor with a good expectation that it'll look identical, or at least very similar, when your collaborators open it up in a rival product. For that kind of use case, LibreOffice is a very good choice.

For the part of the industry where I happen to work, it matters. We're using some of the more niche functionality and compatibility is far from guaranteed. File interchange between "compatible" products is a frequent cause of glitches, which can range from minor formatting problems to lost or corrupted content. Since part of my job is catching those kind of glitches, "compatible most of the time" isn't good enough.

So, for the time being, Word is the standard for some parts of the process and I have to follow that standard. I appreciate the advice on what tools I need to do my job, but this is a conversation that I prefer to have with people who know what my job entails ;-)

 

[YmaOHyd]

Also it's kind of silly getting Word without the Office bundle, and PowerPoint is absolutely industry standard in the business I work in. Whenever someone shows up with a Google presentation I want to smack them. Excel is better than its competitors by a lot, too. So I use Word because I need PowerPoint and Excel.

Plus, I use OpenOffice on my laptop and I hate it -- something about the way the cursor moves when text is entered. It doesn't feel smooth compared to Word.

 

[ronde]

I'm not sure how widespread (across regions) this will be, but I recently got an email from Microsoft to say that they are putting the price of Office 365 up by 50% in the new year (February).

As I suspect quite a few people here use MS Word, I just thought I would let people know to check and see if their subscriptions were about to go up.

A few months ago I was looking for an alternative to MS Word, as it produces extremely messy results if you try to pass it through a Markup translator. Luckily, a few people here recommended LibreOffice and their Writer app. Since then I've found I actually prefer writing in LO Writer compared to Word.

Initially I was going to let my Microsoft Office subscription ride, as I use Excel and Powerpoint quite a lot as part of my (real) job. However, after checking out LibreOffice Calc and Impress, I'm actually pleasantly surprised how capable they are. As a result I've now cancelled my MS Office subscription.

Just posting this in case anyone else notices their Microsoft subscriptions suddenly shooting up, and if they are, then maybe take a look at LibreOffice, you might be surprised.

Libre Open Office is a pretty good substitute for MS Office. I've used "Writer" in the past and Literotica doesn't seem to have problems with stories cut and pasted into the submission box. I do like the fact that Writer shows you how the text will appear inside the margins of a page.

There are some differences that I don't like though. I have a habit of not closing quotations sometimes. Word can highlight every quote mark so the errors are easy to find. I have yet to figure out a way for Writer to sort for a simple quotation mark. Another thing I don't like is that Libre Writer seems to use two diagonal short slashes for quote marks instead of "curly quote marks" like Word. Literotica does not like the alternate quotation marks. You can get around that problem by saving the story as a Word document though.

Other than a few different keystrokes to enter formulae into the Libre version of Excel, it's basically the same. So far the only problem I've had is that the Libre Office version will not sort dates correctly . It sorts dates by Month first, then date, and then year, so if you sort a column of dates, you'll get all the dates that start with January, then all the dates that start with February, etc. The way around that is to convert the date to the "datevalue" and then sort by that. Excel does that automatically. The only other thing I've notices is that in Excel, you change an address to absolute addressing by highlighting the cell address and pressing the F4 key. In Calc, you have to press "shift" and F4.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Speaking of "stuck in the past", .docx replaced .doc as the default file format for Word more than 19 years ago.

Parts of the industry I recently left were referring to a qualification that was replaced in 1997 as if it was still the current standard. Sorry that my suggestion wasn't helpful, 2005 was when I left a desk job for something more interesting. My regional charity work is all done in OpenDocument and I still regularly get .doc files from branch secretaries.

Happy Christmas.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

There is another thing to consider. AFAIK the Office Lifetime licences only allow you to install on one computer.

So, in my case with a laptop and a desktop, I would need two licenses.

There are pros and cons to both cloud-based subscriptions and licensed installs.

I tend to prefer licensed installs due primarily to my frequent need to work off-line and a desire to keep some of my stuff off the cloud.