can someone please explain the Oct 2020 Office 365 subscription changes to me.

[adrianw]

I am hoping someone who works in IT can clarify something, we currently use office 2010, it is good enough for our use, we will soon be upgrading our PC's and are reviewing software, I am told that disc based office will disappear in Oct 2020 and we will have to use 365 at £9 per month, per seat. is this correct, it seems like extortion.

[Dean Learner]

I don’t know the full specifics of office 365 but software subscription is becoming standard across the board.

We use a lot of specialist software (CAD) at work and the transition to subscription is certainly becoming a significant cost that needs to be rationalised (we’re talking thousands per year) and alternatives sought where possible.

One thing I will say about the office 365 subscription is having access to the full suite of software, and especially one drive (think I get 1TB of storage), is pretty useful and worth looking into as there is some functionality hidden in the full suite.

Another bonus of 365 is the ability for users to have multiple installs (ie work and home computers) and also access the online versions of office software. I always ran open office at home but now with 365 just access the online portals. Pretty nice to have some documents on the cloud you’re using at work then to come home and just open them in your browser and continue working away.

[learningtofly]

Yes, as said above it's a tide that won't be turning. My Office, Sage and Adobe CC are all cloud-based subscription services. At least they're always the latest versions

[Glamdring]

I'm still using 2007 and expect to continue to use it. I paid for it. I can't remember the last upgrade that came through for it but who cares? It does what I want.

I think 2010 will not receive any more support after 2020 but it'll continue to work.

If you upgrade to 2016 you'll receive support to 2025.

[Foxy100]

My older Photoshop Elements on my Mac has stopped working properly. Software is from 2016 and as Adobe and Microsoft don't seem to like developing their software for Macs as much as they do PCs I imagine it's easy for them to not bother making software updates to the old disc-based software to work with every new version of Mac's OS. Such is the way of the future, taking us for more money if we want to use their software.

[Jeremy67]

Free google docs office applications are sufficient for 90% of users' requirements. Or you could take a look at (again free) Open Office.

[Mr Pointy]

OP: you can still buy Office 2019 Standalone from MS:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/of...%3aoverviewtab

It will have seven years of support so sometime around October 2025 you'll almost certainly have to go to the 365 version (or whatever it is then).

Something I didn't realise is that after October 2020 all standalone/perpetual versions of Office other than 2019 will stop working with MS cloud services such as Exchange & Onedrive.

Personally I have a 365 account & it's very good. I get hosted email using my own domain & I can load the software on five devices.

[adrianw]

OP: you can still buy Office 2019 Standalone from MS:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/of...%3aoverviewtab

It will have seven years of support so sometime around October 2025 you'll almost certainly have to go to the 365 version (or whatever it is then).

Something I didn't realise is that after October 2020 all standalone/perpetual versions of Office other than 2019 will stop working with MS cloud services such as Exchange & Onedrive.

Personally I have a 365 account & it's very good. I get hosted email using my own domain & I can load the software on five devices.

I currently have 60 seats and am told we will be unable to pick and choose various elements of 365 as we do now, it will be all or nothing,

[blackal]

OP: you can still buy Office 2019 Standalone from MS:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/of...%3aoverviewtab

It will have seven years of support so sometime around October 2025 you'll almost certainly have to go to the 365 version (or whatever it is then).

Something I didn't realise is that after October 2020 all standalone/perpetual versions of Office other than 2019 will stop working with MS cloud services such as Exchange & Onedrive.

Personally I have a 365 account & it's very good. I get hosted email using my own domain & I can load the software on five devices.

Well, as long as my standalone versions keep working - I can live without those features, I think.

[Griswold]

My older Photoshop Elements on my Mac has stopped working properly. Software is from 2016 and as Adobe and Microsoft don't seem to like developing their software for Macs as much as they do PCs I imagine it's easy for them to not bother making software updates to the old disc-based software to work with every new version of Mac's OS. Such is the way of the future, taking us for more money if we want to use their software.

Affinity Photo from Serif is as cheap as PS Elements and is significantly better. I even prefer it to full blown Photoshop. Available for Apple and Windows.

[Kingstepper]

Personally I have a 365 account & it's very good. I get hosted email using my own domain & I can load the software on five devices.

Me too, decent value at ~£70/year. Can usually save £10 buying on amazon rather than renewing with Microsoft.

[Filterlab]

Free google docs office applications are sufficient for 90% of users' requirements. Or you could take a look at (again free) Open Office.

Second that. I see Google Docs being used more and more by my clients. I will migrate to that when Office '11 for Mac stops working. I currently use LibreOffice for some stuff, but I still love Excel for spreadsheets.

I use Pages instead of Word, which is frankly vastly superior. But no PC version of course.

Google Docs is the way forward.

[alfat33]

Personally I wouldn’t put any information that I have on Google Docs or any Google storage, as it will just be more food for their AI algorithms (at best).

Go free by all means, but remember if you aren’t paying, you are probably the product.

[RobM]

I am hoping someone who works in IT can clarify something, we currently use office 2010, it is good enough for our use, we will soon be upgrading our PC's and are reviewing software, I am told that disc based office will disappear in Oct 2020 and we will have to use 365 at £9 per month, per seat. is this correct, it seems like extortion.

As above, you'll still be able to buy a standalone version. But IMO, you're delaying the inevitable and will have to move to a subscription service at some point in the future.

You could look at it another way though; what else do you get in an O365 subscription, that could replace other existing IT services? How much do you pay for your email hosting and any cloud-based file storage? If nothing, is this a cost that will come in the future when you're existing infrastructure needs investment, which you could avoid by moving to O365?

Value is very subjective, but when you're faced with few choices as the market heads in a certain direction, you may as well try and get the maximum benefit from it.

[Mr Pointy]

I currently have 60 seats and am told we will be unable to pick and choose various elements of 365 as we do now, it will be all or nothing,

I'm confused now. What do you currently use & what elements are you picking & choosing? Do you curently have 60 Office 2010 licences?

A second question about your current email hosting. 365 comes into it's own if you are currently running your own Exchange server or if you have someone doing managed hosting. It's worth considering farming this all out to MS which is what you get for £9/mo per user.

I'm no accounting expert but might there be an opex/capex element? 60 sets of Office 2019 wouldbe capex whereas 365 might be opex?

[adrianw]

I'm confused now. What do you currently use & what elements are you picking & choosing? Do you curently have 60 Office 2010 licences?

A second question about your current email hosting. 365 comes into it's own if you are currently running your own Exchange server or if you have someone doing managed hosting. It's worth considering farming this all out to MS which is what you get for £9/mo per user.

I'm no accounting expert but might there be an opex/capex element? 60 sets of Office 2019 wouldbe capex whereas 365 might be opex?

We would see this as Capex, we currently have a mix of 2007 and 2010 licences, and use exchange server, we are old fashioned and would rather everything was stored here, we also have customers that insist all data is stored on site

[Mr Pointy]

We would see this as Capex, we currently have a mix of 2007 and 2010 licences, and use exchange server, we are old fashioned and would rather everything was stored here, we also have customers that insist all data is stored on site

Well it seems you're faced with shelling out £15,000 for 60 new Office 2019 licences then (less any discount you can negotiate). 365 would be £474 a month (60x £7.90) so after 32 months you'll be ahead. You'll be ok until 2025 when you'll probably need to go to 365.