office 365

Isn't Office 365 a subscription service? So why do you have to worry about upgrades?

Yes and no. Office 365 is separated part of MS Office. It have most of function as all other newest version, but you have to pay each time for it (it mean your subscription). I was thinking about them but I decided to get 2010 instead for one time higher price but I have them for rest of my life.

Aren't there better and free options ?

As I understand it, I pay a years fee for all of Office, if i buy it now, ill get Word, PPT, Outlook etc 2013.

If there is a new version next year, will I get that version automatically updated?

Office 365 is the subscription version of Office 2013. If you pay for 365 then you probably won't get the next generation of Office unless Microsoft decides to make you get it. If you really plan on paying for Office then you might want to consider the one-time payment for a lifetime license of Office 2013.

The way it's written on their website (why don't you just read there OP?) you will pay about 99€ (probably 99$ if you're from the US) each year and you will always get the newest Office as long as you are subscribed.

Personally I think that's quite a lot. Is there any specific reason you need to get Microsoft Office? LibreOffice is free and I don't think it's missing anything that only Microsoft can offer. And the UI and how it works is almost identical.

What about all the libre office stuff ? It's way better than micro$oft in terms of quality and price.
Google has a bunch of free stuff for the cloud
and Zoho is a good alternative as well no ?

The only program you need in the Office suite is OneNote. Go get LibreOffice or the other free alternatives, because they literally do exactly the same stuff.

hey

Let me preface this by saying I work for a store that sells Office and I've been trained on what you get with the license.

If the new Office comes out while your subscription is active, you can upgrade to the new version without paying any more. If you have a Windows machine and a Mac and the new Mac Office comes out before the Windows one, you'll get the new Mac Office on your Mac, and wait for the Windows one and vice versa. The key though is that your subscription must be active.

If your subscription lapses and you fail to renew it, or you remove the license but not the software from a computer, you can still use Office to open documents, but some functionality is disabled. I believe that includes editing, saving and printing, but I could be mistaken. For most of those you should be able to use a web-based service to get around the issues.

To address some other points in the thread...

1) Office 365 is not cost beneficial to everyone. It is beneficial to those who plan on installing Office on 3 to 5 computers and/or mobile devices. With Office 365 you can install on up to 5 computers, and 5 mobile devices (certain mobile devices only).

2) Office 365 is also beneficial to people who need parts of Office that are not included in Office Home and Student. 365 includes Outlook and Publisher. It also includes 60 Skype world minutes a month.

3) University students and staff (anyone with a valid .edu email address) can purchase Office 365 University. It is a 4 year subscription, rather than a single year subscription, and is $80, which makes the price $20 a year. The University subscription can only be installed on 2 computers, not 5 (a desktop and laptop, for instance). Even if Dreamspark doesn't have a deal with your school, you are still eligible for this.

4) You can still purchase the single license versions of Office Home and Student (or Home and Business which has Outlook instead of OneNote, or Professional which has almost everything) but they can only be installed on one computer for the life of the computer. With the 365 versions you manage your licenses online, so you can remove the license from a computer whenever. With the single license version you only manage the license on the computer you have it on. Trying to install it on a 2nd computer after the first one has crashed might pose problematic.

5) You can also still purchase single licenses of standalone programs. They're about 30 dollars less than Home and Student, so most people don't bother with them, but if all you need is to add Publisher, or Outlook, and 365 won't work for you, or you don't want to spend the extra money for just Powerpoint when you don't need all 4 programs, it can still be done.

Open Office. All you need.