MS raised prices so people will now start renting their office products instead

users
#1

I was reading a new article[s] about MS raising pricing on their new products for the traditional buying of the software. The want you to rent the software instead. I really do not like the idea of renting software, since I tend to keep the software in a drawer for years between usage from one system to another. I still have MSO 2003 and some other packages even older than that, that I still use on Windows [XP mostly] systems. So renting software would not work.

http://www.zdnet.com/what-you-gain-and-lose-with-office-2013-subscriptions-7000004386/?s_cid=e539

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-announces-office-2013-prices-and-packaging-7000004381/

All of their multi-license deals are going away, so businesses will be forced to buy a license for each system, or rent the package at a much larger deal than a home/household user will pay.

My worry is that if you rent for a small price this year, what is the chance that MS will make you pay 150% for the next year, and then next year after that. You will have to pay what they tell you to pay just to keep using the package.

I am so glad that LO is free.

#2

You can always have your free dose if you want:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-quietly-shuts-down-office-genuine-advantage-program/2798

#3

I just reported this price increase and marketing option so our people could know what MSO is doing. We may get more users for LO because of the move that MSO is doing towards renting office. I would not rent a software package.

Free is still the best deal and LO has that over MSO.

#4

If you look at the date in the zdnet url--2010--you'll see that (a) it's obsolete and (b) it never said you could have free Office, just that they wouldn't check
whether you stole it.

I predicted several years ago that MS would start making software expire (stop working) so you'd have to buy new. The effect of renting is exactly that. If
you don't pay the rent, the s/w will expire, and you won't be able to use it. Probably at some point, they will still make you "upgrade" to a newer edition--just
what I had been saying. Note, too, that the old argument, "I bought it, so it's mine," will be out the window--if it's rented, it clearly is *not* yours to copy, etc.

Just another ploy to keep the moolah coming in. If this works, you can bet that other s/w manufacturers will start doing likewise. Outfits with big-ticket
programs like Photoshop and AutoCAD. etc.

--doug

o--
Blessed are the peacekeepers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A.M. Greeley

#5

As far as I remember, it was never yours. Most EULAs forbid e.g. reselling of
box copy. They clearly state that they grant you right to use software,
nothing more.

#6

In Germany there is a legal market for used software including OEM versions
of Windows and Office.

#7

In Germany there is a legal market for used software including OEM versions
of Windows and Office.

I think the used market is partly driven by local laws and how the
courts have or have not enforced the EULA.

Back to the renting issue, IMHO one should look past the hype and try to
determine if renting/SaaS is good deal overall. If you are not using
bleeding edge features of your office suite then updating the software
often may not make sense except when support for your version lapses. I
suspect most users do not use much outside the common core features of
any office suite (LO, AOO, MSO, etc) thus upgrading is not needed when a
new version comes out. LO and AOO being FOSS do not cost users any money
to obtain. Thus LO and AOO are not obsessively concerned about how fast
users upgrade from previous versions. MS, however, needs people to buy
new versions of MSO. Thus methods such as deprecating older file formats
or adopting a rental model will be used. The rental model, in theory,
guarantees a stabler cash flow whether the software rental is good for
users is another matter.

#8

Not so. Extract from EULA for Office 2010:
TRANSFER TO A THIRD PARTY. The first user of the software may make a one-time transfer
of the software and this agreement, by transferring the genuine proof of license directly to a third
party. The first user must remove the software before transferring it separately from the licensed
device. The first user may not retain any copies of the software. Before any permitted transfer,
the other party must agree that this agreement applies to the transfer and use of the software. If
the software is an upgrade, any transfer must also include all prior versions of the software.

#9

You suspect correctly. In any organisation, home use etc, the usual statistic is that 80% of users only use 20% of the functionality....
(I'm a retired Systems Accountant and have seen that more or less in most places I've worked, from a 2-man advertising agency to a couple of large quoted companies...and MOST places don't use VBA or Macros at all, which is the usual excuse for keeping MS and not moving to OO/LO...)

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
Even though they don 't use advanced features they still tend to feel they do.

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the skill level and knowledge of the user and the amount they feel they use advanced features.  Take Andreas for example.  An extremely sophisticated and skilled user that thinks whipping up a few databases before breakfast is no big deal.

Compare to the average office manager that needs to hire in IT consultants to reboot a router, involving sending a memo to all staff and re-arranging people's schedules, a planning&strategy meeting to set-up a team, a call-out for an engineer to look at the router and report back to the team that we need to buy a more advanced router (that turns out to be a down-grade) and can only buy this particular one from him but somehow involves postal charges from Norway.  Since so much work and effort went into switching the thing off and then on again from then on they think that rebooting a router is obviously extremely complex.

Obviously almost anyone on this list would have just pressed the on/off switch a couple of times and waited a couple of minutes after each action.  The result being that even if they didn't know it before they do realise that it's a trivial task.

Hence the more advanced users are, the more they tend to think most of what they do is trivial.  Far less advanced users are often "a bit precious" and assume they are always doing advanced stuff even though they aren't. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

Hi :slight_smile:
I was sure Miro was right.  The last MS Eula i read was quite a long time ago and i vaguely remember it having all sorts of shocking things such as writer's not owning work they had done using the software and other stuff that just really shouldn't stand up in court.  Perhaps i got a joke one but i'm sure it was from the MS site.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#12

Gordon,

+1

Most features one needs have been include in office suites since the
some time in the 90's. I can not think of a feature that I want see
implemented that is not already implemented. I can remember when spell
checking was the user looking up the word in a dead tree dictionary. So
the problem with commercial suites is how to get users to buy a new
version when the current version is probably overkill.

My observations on macros are:

1. most people do not know any programming and do not wish to learn any
programming. More accurately, they will not learn any programming. Thus
they will never write their own macro and will only use macros provided,
if any. Since the macros they use are canned, they would only notice
differences in "look and feel" not in the actual code and would only
care that the macro worked.

2. those who can write macros are mostly not professional programmers
but users who probably learned programming elsewhere. Many engineers and
scientists probably fall into this category, they learned programming in
college (my case Fortran and Pascal). Often, their macros were written
for their purposes not because of some perceived business requirement.

3. the professional programmers who write macros probably know several
languages so they should be able to learn another. Unless they are
selling commercial products, they could be suite agnostic, e.g. they
only want to know what the suite is (API's) and its macro language(s). I
believe LO supports several different languages for scripting - I saw
Python and JavaScript listed.

My guess the group that complains the most about switching because of
macros would be the second group because they only know a few languages
at most (VBA and what they languages they learned as an undergraduate)
and do not want to learn another since their primary function is not
programming.

When I was writing macros for MSO, I was firmly in the second category
but I have migrated to a situation closer to the third category.

Because macros are a potential malware vector, I believe macro execution
requires more user interaction before a foreign macro will execute.
Thus, I would consider other ways to implement macro functionality if I
needed one for a large number of people in most situations.

#13

Hi :slight_smile:
Even though they don 't use advanced features they still tend to feel they do.

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the skill level and knowledge of the user and the amount they feel they use advanced features. Take Andreas for example. An extremely sophisticated and skilled user that thinks whipping up a few databases before breakfast is no big deal.

Compare to the average office manager that needs to hire in IT consultants to reboot a router, involving sending a memo to all staff and re-arranging people's schedules, a planning&strategy meeting to set-up a team, a call-out for an engineer to look at the router and report back to the team that we need to buy a more advanced router (that turns out to be a down-grade) and can only buy this particular one from him but somehow involves postal charges from Norway. Since so much work and effort went into switching the thing off and then on again from then on they think that rebooting a router is obviously extremely complex.

Obviously almost anyone on this list would have just pressed the on/off switch a couple of times and waited a couple of minutes after each action. The result being that even if they didn't know it before they do realise that it's a trivial task.

Hence the more advanced users are, the more they tend to think most of what they do is trivial. Far less advanced users are often "a bit precious" and assume they are always doing advanced stuff even though they aren't.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Interesting point. I think the "average" user tends to either, as you
suggest, over estimate their skills and knowledge or are utterly fearful
of the computer/program not working.

#14

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :)  I think "average" can be used in different ways.  If we take the meaning where it's the highest number of users then the average user tends to have extremely low ability and tends to be very fearful in a passive-aggressive way = "Don't touch it!!!  You might break because i don't understand what you are doing and therefore you can't possibly understand it either".

After all, they can produce a letter, therefore they are fully skilled and know everything worth knowing, right? (or are you telling them they are a moron?).    
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#15

Lucky you.

1. I want to put chapter name in page header, but I want to limit too long
text, if it appears. At least two work-arounds exist, but they are far from
being plain and simple:
<http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56445>

2. In template, I would like to create paragraph style assigned to list style
which will start at second (or another) list level. You must use tab manually:
<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42920>

3. In automatically generated Table of contents I want dots from chapter name
to page number. But I want some space between these dots, let's say 0.25cm.
I couldn't achieve that.

4. If you need exact control of footnotes + separator line + line margins
height on page basis (and I do), then you must create different page style for
each page with footnotes. If you document is longer than few pages this is
really tiresome.

5. I would like to see generated content for character styles. This way I
could select text, assign "quote" character style and get quotation marks
before and after placed automatically. If I ever decide to use italic for
quotes, these marks should disappear. I should be able to do this from Styles
and formatting window.

6. I use italics for quotations. If I put quote in quote, then it should be
normal text instead of italics.

(5 and 6 are trivial in CSS.)
These are few ideas out of top of my head, just for Writer (which I use the
most). Perhaps there could be other things as well.

With improved table autoformat in 3.6 we finally have some kind of usable table
styles. With Zotero we can have sensible bibliography in documents. Right now
LibreOffice is better than ever, but there are still some features missing.

#16

Hi :slight_smile:
I think there is another category between 1 and 2.

1.3  People that are completely clueless about macros or any programming concepts but try to use some sort of macro-recorder and then blame other people when their macro doesn't work.  Since they haven't anticipated or prepared for anything being even slightly different on users machines their macros quite often go wrong until users learn to follow some arcane and archaic ritual in order to use the macro.  This group tends to find the need to 'write' macros for everything however unnecessary and however easier it is to accomplish the same thing without using a macro.  The arcane ritual is blamed on macros and gives the impression that macros are more difficult than they really are and they are quite complicated enough without adding that layer of FUD.  It bolsters the opinion that the writer must be really skilful in being able to understand macros, oooooh they surely deserve to be promoted.

Wow!!  I guess i am having a really bad hair day!
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#17

Miroslaw,

You are correct there always more that can be done for some users. But
for most users, many who do not know about the editing features you are
referring to, the feature set they use is essentially from the 90's.

I know I do not use many of the features of Write, mostly because I do
very little actual document writing and what writing I do tends to be
simple documents closer to a short office memo.

#18

And that is what the vast majority of (any) Office suite users do. This is the whole point about the constant upgrading path that MS uses in order to generate revenue (and let's not forget that Office is the biggest cash generating product that MS sells by far) - most users don't NEED to upgrade but they have to because otherwise they get no support.

#19

I keep hearing that 90% of the MSO users use less than 10% of MSO's package features.
That is 90% of the Word users use less than 10% of its features, 905 of Excel users use less that 10% of its features, etc., etc..

I remember seeing an advertisement for MS-Word in the late 90's stating that there are over 1000 new features in Word alone for the next version of MSO. That must have been either for MSO-98[?] or MSO-2000.

Can you imagine how many features Word has now? Then try to think of how many features you have ever use for Word or Writer [OOo and then LO] in the amount of time that you have used either one. I doubt I have used too many myself from Word 95 through Word-2003 and OOo Writer [1.x.x - 3.3.0] and LO [3.3.0 RC2{or RC3?} till 3.5.6].

I think if LO tried to match all the features that Word/Excel/PowerPoint has with Writer/Calc/Impress, it would make LO so bloated that people will not want to use it. The last time I has MSO-2003 on the same system as LO/OOo, Word took almost 2 minutes to completely start up to the point I could type in anything while LO's Writer icon took less than 30 seconds on the same machine to get Writer to the point where I could type in anything. I wonder what MSO-2012 or MSO-2013 would take to start up to that point on the same system - 5 minutes?

Look at all the drive space MSO and any major Adobe package takes in its "default" installations. The last time I installed Photoshop it took over a GB of drive space on my 120 GB laptop. Yes, now we have over 700 GB laptop drives and 3 TB drives for desktops [I have a 1 TB and a 2TB internal and the same with USB drives], but it still does not mean that a package should be so bloated that it will take so much drive space for its installation.

For my Ubuntu 10.04 desktop, I have internally a 1 TB drive and a 2 TB second drive. The 2 TB drive has 185 GB free, while the 1 TB drive 221 GB free. The 2 TB drive is full of audio and video files and the 1 TB is for OS and all of the other data, like all my digital photos since 2005. I have two matching external drives [1 TB and a 2 TB] for a full backup of each drive. For me EVERY package that takes more that it should in drive space is less space for my own data that needs storage. I should backup my 2 laptops and the computer I have hooked up to my HD-TV entertainment setup, BUT I do not have enough space on my external backup drives for it to happen.

SO
MSO [Word, Excel, PowerPoint] are bloated with mostly unused options that LO should not even try to include. We need to keep it with the needed options for the 90% "average" users and not for those that are in the last 10% or even those in the last 1% or less users that do so complex work that the "average" user could not figure out why this is being done or even how to do such a thing even with the needed documentation. I remember seeing a 12 volume of 3 inch thick book set [shrink wrapped together] that claimed to document all of the options for Word 95 or Word 98[?]. It was in the 90's that I saw it on the shelf of the biggest book store in the county. I do not think our Documentation people would want to match that for each version line [3.3.x, 3.4.x, 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x, 3.8.x].

#20

I totally disagree.

If user is unable to do something he wants with open documentation, then this
is documentation fault. It should be fixed (made clear, verbose, use
screenshots or anything), not feature should be disabled.

There are many ways to speed up opening of programs. Some features may be
delayed or loaded on request. Application can be modularized - core features
are loaded by default, other are loaded only if user wants them (take a look
at LaTeX, GNU R, Miranda (instant messenger), even Mozilla Firefox to some
avail).

*Removing* features is total no-go, because it will drive away these users who
need them. And I don't think that LO is application only for 90% of it's
current users.