Office 365 - What on earth for?

Dave would be inclueded in "most".

Most home users should be fine without Outlook. it's another thing that if you want to waste your money, you're absolutely free to do that; It's your money afterall.

 

Since Outlook seems to be the only reason for some people, why don't they just buy it separately?

 

Yes, that's what I meant. I was attempting the answer the question posed by the thread title, which is why do people buy MS Office 365 and MS Office in general given that there are less expensive and free alternatives. I observe the fact that although there are a number of quite good free office suites they have not been widely adopted, in the business world in particular. I believe one reason for that is the lack of an app that provides the functionality of Outlook. If the free suites included an app like Outlook they would be more widely adopted. Of course there are other reasons why people use MS Office, for instance some believe it's the "standard" and if they don't use it they will appear unprofessional, some because their companies require it, and some find there are issues with formatting when going back and forth between MS Office and other suites. None of these other reasons concern me, but until I can find another app that does what Outlook does I will keep using it.

 

A very good and legitimate question JL. In fact, for some, it might be a reasonable solution. However, in my opinion, the power of Outlook and the MS Office suite is it's integration and/or how they work together.

Yes, I understand that free office suites have some level of integration, but in my experience, not near the integration of MS Office. Outlook so seamlessly integrates with the rest of Office, that I, for one, am not sure I could or want to use Outlook by itself.

With that said, I have no idea if it's possible to integrate Outlook (free-standing) with free office suites.

 

not sure but one of the requirement for Outlook is 3 GB of disk space!

that can't be for just an email program, can it?

 

It must mean that 3 GB of free space is needed to successfully install, not that it actually takes up that much space. I have Office 2013 Professional installed and it takes up 2.6 GB, but that includes Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote and Publisher.

 

No, all of the Office 2013 suites specify the same requirement (i.e., 3.0 GB available disk space).

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/office-system-requirements-FX102921529.aspx#

EDIT: See also Victek123's post (above)

 

If they *only* use Outlook, have little or no use for other MS Office applications (including the integration thereof), and *only* require 1 license for 1 PC, that approach might make sense. However, it's a much closer call if they need several licenses for several PCs.

For example, I need 5 licenses for use at home (3 users - total of 5 PCs). I *could* buy 5 copies of Outlook 2013 from Amazon for ~$90-$95, for a total of $450-$475 USD. Using simple math, that's almost *5 years* worth of subscription fees for Office 365 which, of course, not only includes feature additions and enhancements but also Access, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word.

 

This is exactly the point I made earlier but seems to be drowned in all the negativity. Office 365 does make financial sense in this scenario, and it also makes practical sense since you don't have to bother with retail discs, installs, updates etc.

 

If I remember right, I think there are also Student versions/rates for Office 365. Also, I am pretty sure you can opt into Office 365 on a month to month basis without any long term commitment, for a pretty reasonable price, the student price being even more reasonable. So it's easy to try it, and if you don't like, dump it, nothing much lost.

I can't say anything about the quality of the apps since I haven't used it. I haven't used Office 2013 either, and I've heard bad things about it too. I do like and use Office 2010 and earlier (2007/2003) on various occasions.

And yes, MS Office still dominates business and corporate world, at least here in the U.S., and will continue to do so, even though there are free alternatives (if you leave Outlook out of the question).

I would say that MS Office and Outlook are far superior to the alternatives, with the reservation that I haven't used 365, so I can't speak for that. And I guess that's what this thread is actually about. Lol...

 

For private use the alternatives are probably fine, they save money.

For a business it makes very little sense to not use Office. Most people are familiar with it, the training costs, cost of a file not opening due to compatibility etc are too high, more than the cost of Office. And for small businesses, 365 makes a lot of sense. Outlook is a standard in workplaces for a reason, I'd say its more important than Word or Powerpoint since everyone needs to email and schedule meetings.

Anyway thread is getting off track. MS have made some very strange design choices with their new line of products, on that we can all agree.

 

Outlook may well be standard in many workplaces, but at my college it isn't really my priority. The two most important programs to me personally are probably Writer (Word) & Impress (Powerpoint) as my main concern is in writing session plans & presentations for classes that I teach. Any staff meetings I will be told about anyway. Even email isn't a priority (internal or otherwise). I don't even have MS Office on any of the three computers that I own. Although I do use Google Drive often. I've managed for years without buying any of these MS products, I have no need of them.

I do agree about MS & its recent design choices though, I really can't explain them.

 

It's just part of the larger insanity at MS that's been going on since 8 appeared... no cause for alarm.

 

I thought that Universities usually offer MS products (and other commercial software, Acrobat, Photoshop) for free or for a small fee (Educational discounts) to their students and staff...

 

Maybe things are different in the UK?

 

This may sound bizarre to many, but I actually prefer OO to MS Office. Many of our laptops have OO on anyway.

 

OO is good, actually I am using it now myself (just for a change of scenery) and I do have a license for Office 2007. I think MS Office is dominant in business here in the US where compatibility is a must. Otherwise, OO/LibO could theoretically be used more, but aren't.

 

I'm using MS Office 2013 with Win 8 and find it a great suite, unrivalled IMO (I only use Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and am learning to use OneNote). With Vista I'm very happy using Kingsoft Office 2013 and StarOffice 9, but they are certainly not in the same league with MS Office.

I find Office 365 interesting even for 3 computers except the deal breaker for me is that the supported OS's are only Win7/8 which means that I would have to upgrade 2 computers to Win 8 in order to have a convenient deal, it's not worth it for me at the moment.

Something positive from MS:

http://articles.economictimes.india...ws/42148573_1_microsoft-india-ngos-nonprofits