Microsoft jacks the price of Office

[Paddy]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/923...ce_by_up_to_17_

And the real insult is that the price has been raised on Office 2011. Two year old software...

One more reason to use LibreOffice or Pages/Numbers/Keynote. I refuse to send M$ money every year.

The loss of the family pack perpetual license is, for me, the most annoying. Normally we have it installed on at least 4 computers, using a family pack and one version from my husband's work (where they get a license for home use for $10).

[sandbox]

Hey Paddy,
We're in the same ice bound boat it seems.
Though we have had the family pack for years, I've kept up with Neo-Office as well, just to keep my hand in it...and fingers crossed.
Have you used LibreOffice, is their a worthwhile difference between the two?

Try as I may, using "Pages/Numbers/Keynote" on the government/legal/medical documents has been a challenge through the years, which is mostly what has kept us in MS Office... (formatting is the major issue) I've struggled to keep a Mac Office for the past 15 years, though better now, still challenging at times.

Randy Singer has been a helpful resource through the years, and in balance I think the problems I had were far fewer and less intrusive than the security problems that everyone around me had been challenged with time and again.

I would pay good money to be done with MS entirely, but I can never turn my back on them because others use their products and share them with me.  

All good wishes.

[Paddy]

Hey, SB - good to see you around again!

LibreOffice is free, so you can just download it and give it a whirl. I have it - but since I have Orifice 11, and spend half my life trading docs with PC users, I don't tend to use the freebies much, since typically there are more compatibility issues. I have used NeoOffice and LibreOffice for things like opening WordPerfect files - which MS Office cannot do.

[krissel]

The comments after this article are very telling.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technol...tm_medium=email


Hi Mark!  

[sandbox]

Occasionally I would get .docx files that wouldn't open in MS-Word 2011 that Neo-office would open without a hitch.
We have to do Power-Point presentations created by others that work well on a MBP using Office, but not so well in other software.
I'm in the process of testing a PP conversion application for the Samsung Galaxy note 10.1, if that works out well Jane would smile.

I suppose if I needed 5 issues of MS Office $99 bucks a year wouldn't be a deal breaker, but at best I could use 2 now and 3 when all my Intel Mac's are moved into the Lion's den.

All these Offerings, especially the cable and TV providers, have optimized their businesses around the calculation that you will buy more than you use, MS and even Apple are no different. I've always praised the fact that Apple loads a lot of software into their hardware, but there is software that I'll never use. One has to ask, why 5 issues of MS Office and not 4 or 6? "Someguy", with a head the size o a watermelon calculated that most businesses use either 3 issues of MS office or 6 which will either over issue or under issues the needs of the public so they can capitalize on the average business requirement. We know this is happening and are helpless to do a darn thing to change it. ;-)

[sandbox]

Hi Kris, sorry I didn't see your response before I posted. I started to post../ then got called away... and when I returned to finish, it was more than an hour later.
I use Google doc in our Android phones, and there are many Office aps that handle MS products on android including a most resent release b MS itself.

Hope all-swell with you and yours, it's pretty amazing how a storm event can refocus all your attention. Our storm-season is about to begin. ;-)

all good wishes

QUOTE(krissel @ Feb 24 2013, 01:20 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The comments after this article are very telling.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technol...tm_medium=email


Hi Mark!  

[sandbox]

Paddy, I've been messing around with LibreOffice and it seem to fall short in many areas. Search+Replace, converting space/tab to a spread sheet, to name a few, that NeoOffice seems to handle better. I've seen the trend out there towards Libre and suspect it might have something to do with the donation Neo is asking for.
http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Neo...ture_Comparison
If either of these offering would actually build  replacement for MS with duplicate formatting I'd pay $100 bucks or more.
If folks really want to deter MS from this sort of business practice, they could, by supporting the alternative projects, I suspect.
Only two people work on NeoOffice part time and they correct any problems in  weeks time, V Libre's 4-6 week fixes.
Just sayin  

[sandbox]

Jim, we were forced to have MS Office, so the learning curve is over, with no time to fiddle with something new. If Jane has a .docx or something that won't open, I end up with it. Text Edit will open most anything but it strips the formatting. If the doc is just a point of information, then Text Edit is the quickest solution, but if it's something we need to retain or edit and pass along, the structure and formatting is essential. Pages hasn't served us well in this regard, and I don't suspect that Apple is too concerned about it.

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Feb 24 2013, 11:05 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My wife always used MarinerWrite to open/edit/save .doc and .docx stuff. But I noticed last week that they were opening in Pages. I think that occurred when I upgraded her MBP to Mountain Lion (which she barely noticed).

The problem is that Pages/Apple assumes you want to convert the .doc to .pages. That means one has to remember to use "Save as...". EVERY SINGLE TIME THE DOCUMENT IS ReSAVED!!! (I know, but she has been able to finally create the habit of Saving often... ) This thread reminds me to change the default app to open .doc files back to MW! Judy doesn't understand why Pages works that way, and I can't give her a logical reason, anyway.

She has used Google Docs for a shared spreadsheet (that, of course, should have been a database ), but she still grasping that document doesn't live on her hard drive.

[Xairbusdriver]

So far, my wife's use of Word docs hasn't needed to preserve the formatting as much as just the text. And it's not for any Government work, either. Just read some info on the Macworld site about using an iPad for editing Word documents. Same problems there, several apps mentioned, all of which can't maintain some formatting, can't edit some things. Another alternative is Google Docs, but that only really works if everyone uses it. Many are, but mostly businesses and there are many who don't like using the "cloud" for any kind of sensitive/private/proprietary info. I doubt there will ever be any way to use something other than Word to deal with its output without making some compromises.

I discovered that MarinerWrite needs a plugin/or something to even read a Word doc. I may have deleted that months ago. Not sure which will be easier; getting MW working again or having Judy learn to use the frustrating 'Save as..." function in Pages!