Microsoft Office 365

[UltraSeps]

Anybody here bite the bullet and subscribe to Office 365?  I finally got fed up using my old Office 2007.

Its not a bad deal....5 users, $100 annually.  Plus each user gets 1 TB of cloud storage.

I use it primarily for Outlook and Excel.  The new Outlook is very good and a major step up, especially if you're doing a great deal of mail correspondence with multiple accounts, such as me.  By far its the best email client available.

Outlook 2007 - 2010 was so bad and slow, IMO, I hacked my old Outlook 2000 to run on Vista and Win 7 although the mod doesn't work on Win 8 or 10.

Just a heads up to give it a try.

[blue moon]

For those on a budget, OpenOffice.org is free and very similar to MS product.
For email we use Thunderbird, also free.

Don't know much about MS Office any more, as I switched to OO over 10 years ago, so not qualified to judge it, just like the idea that the OO is less prone to viruses and attacks.

Pierre

[Frog]

Open Office (and Thunderbird) here, but I do very little "word processing".

[jvanick]

I use Libre Office here... it was 'forked' from Open Office and is the 'advanced features/quicker development' version...

I've used Thunderbird for years as well... both work great, and are far more secure than the micro$oft garbage that corporate america likes to use.

[royster13]

I can not imagine going back to an email program that is not web based.....Been using Gmail (my own domain) for 9 years....As far as the other programs, far too many free or low cost options to pay Microsoft....

[UltraSeps]

I'm in 100% agreement that Free Is Good.  If one of the free Office options works for you along with using Thunderbird, that's great.  Its just that I need MS Office for a variety of reasons and their new deal works well in my situation.

Wouldn't it be great to pay Adobe $100 "annually" to install Creative Cloud on 5 systems?  Okay, completely different product structure, therefore a direct comparison isn't equitable, although that would be nice.  Disgruntled ramblings are abundant regarding the $600 annual cost for Creative Cloud.

[royster13]

I am a huge fan of my "rental software" from Adobe.....So it works very well for me.....

As far as Office, what do you do in Office that can be done in other programs?...I must be missing something....

[UltraSeps]

As far as Office, what do you do in Office that can be done in other programs?...I must be missing something....

Well, I often work with several financial firms who send me derivative pricing model spreadsheets, primarily to assist in forecasting potential value, or lack thereof regarding certain futures contracts and options.  For some reason, these spreadsheets are Excel specific.  They won't work or at the very least, can't be trusted to perform as specified using alternative software.

With email, I must have 500+ pre-written drafts containing links and attachments using Outlook.  They can't easily be migrated to another email client.  This among other things.

[royster13]

For sure if you use high tech Excel files, Excel is all you can use....

As far a pre-made stuff in Outlook I also have lots of premade content.........So I just cut and paste into Gmail...The big plus for me is always having access from anywhere and on any device...About 70,000+ emails since 2001 are are there for me....

[Sbrem]

I was running Office 2004, but when I got this new Mac a couple of months ago, it wouldn't work anymore. So far, Apple's Numbers (Excel) and Pages (Word) are working, plus I use OO too. No need for Outlook, Apple mail is fine for the basic communication we use it for.

Steve