If you like Office (I’m one of the people who does) I strongly recommend buying one of the older versions – Office 2021 for Mac, for example – that’s still a one-off payment (usually under £50) and staying WELL away from the subscription product. - ThreadSky

jamesrball.com • 38 days ago

If you like Office (I’m one of the people who does) I strongly recommend buying one of the older versions – Office 2021 for Mac, for example – that’s still a one-off payment (usually under £50) and staying WELL away from the subscription product.

Reposted from Sam Leith

This is really shocking: and true. I discovered I'd just been upgraded without consent to an AI-enshittified package that was about £30 a year more expensive. Strongly recommend anyone who has an Office 365 follow the below advice to get rid of it

Comments

teespirit.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yes! Sub models have always been crap, they're just a way to 1)Smooth out revenue spikes at orgs 2)To sly unwanted things on to you w/t you knowing/increase prices whenever they fancy to keep their 'growth on growth' based bonuses flowing. They hate stand alone products,it's why they obsolete them

heisenberg912.bsky.social•38 days ago

I did have a copy of office 2013 installed on my old laptop until recently. Booted it up one day to find it was gone and only had office 365… No idea if or how I could get it back! Not sure if it was uninstalled due to being so old perhaps. But I was not given a choice in it!

lorenzogc.bsky.social•38 days ago

There's Office Home 2024 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote only, perpetual license).
I'm not letting Microsoft rip my dad off

romeoromeotango.bsky.social•38 days ago

I'm still using Word 2010. Works fine.

jamesrball.com•38 days ago

If you pay Google for email storage or any of its similar products, be very careful as it’s also trying to auto-upgrade users onto a much pricier package that uses Gemini. It is easier to opt out than Microsoft, though, at least.

gmhales.bsky.social•38 days ago

Do you get cloud storage with the one off Microsoft product?

jamesrball.com•38 days ago

You seem to, yes! But as I'm on Apple I don't use it as the default save folders are already in the cloud.

paulchandler.bsky.social•38 days ago

Jesus. Google desperate to get me to sign up to storage.

Old enough to remember when Gmail didn't have delete option and space was presented as infinite.

tomderoeck.bsky.social•38 days ago

for workspaces (which I just did)

tarquinhawk.bsky.social•38 days ago

Thanks fir this. I hot the impression i had to buy subscription if i wanted word, excel etc? Can i just buy a standalone product then?

sometimehippy.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yep. Even better, dig out an older version you've used in the past; codes for 2016 or earlier can be obtained from the MS website from previous purchases.

Alas, they don't seem to want to do this for 2019, but you can't have everything you paid for I suppose.

cjcarnall.bsky.social•38 days ago

Thanks very much for alerting us to this. Seriously dishonest 🤬

timsmedley.bsky.social•38 days ago

Oh I didn't even know this was possible? You can still just buy the old one?

vincentoconnell.co.uk•38 days ago

Isn't the problem that it soon becomes out of date? The reason I starting subscribing was I could no longer open older Word files.

sometimehippy.bsky.social•38 days ago

Not a problem I'm aware of. I've opened files from the 90s without trouble, and upgraded them in situ too.

radiohead319.bsky.social•38 days ago

That's exactly what I did. You can often get the full Office package for less than £10 if you buy a second hand licence. This is totally legit - MS lost a court case against the EU seeking to forbid the second hand licence market.

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