Microsoft Slams Office 2019 in Office 365 Ads

[Guest]

Microsoft has published new Office 365 ads that are less-than-compelling for their portrayal of people who use Office 2019.

Microsoft Slams Office 2019 in Office 365 Ads : Read more

 

[philipemaciel]

"and they’re not cloud-connected" - a much welcome feature! W10 updates forever erasing your personal files, anyone?

AD: "and it doesn’t have the amazing AI-powered capabilities" — Reality (per Tom's homepage): Microsoft Doesn't Want Flawed AI to Hurt its Rep

 

[g-unit1111]

Never thought I'd see a company in 2019 release an ad critical of its' own products, but that is what happens when you live in a world of mega mergers and giant conglomerates.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

They want you to stop using Office 2019 (and older) in favor of their continuous revenue product. They realize many people have noticed that a new version of Office is unnecessary for what they do... so they have to make the older type, traditional, product look bad to encourage you to buy into their continuous cash-flow model.

 

[salgado18]

They want you to stop using Office 2019 (and older) in favor of their continuous revenue product. They realize many people have noticed that a new version of Office is unnecessary for what they do... so they have to make the older type, traditional, product look bad to encourage you to buy into their continuous cash-flow model.

Many people would be more than happy with Office 2010 (or even 2007).

 

[g-unit1111]

They want you to stop using Office 2019 (and older) in favor of their continuous revenue product. They realize many people have noticed that a new version of Office is unnecessary for what they do... so they have to make the older type, traditional, product look bad to encourage you to buy into their continuous cash-flow model.

Ah, so abandon the one-time purchase static product in favor of a continuously updated model that relies on ads and micro transactions? Got it.

 

[premomh]

@SHRAPNEL_INDIE - Absolutely... I've got 3 seperate machines that run Office 2003, 2007 and 2013 respectively. Don't really see the need to continuously upgrade... They do what I need. Beyond that - LibreOffice looks pretty good to me...

But yeah, like you said - the continuous cash-flow model is all Microsoft cares about, not providing a solid user experience.

 

[sadsteve1952]

Since I'm retired now, Microsoft Office is just overkill. I went with Libre Office and I'm completely satisfied for my use case. Another plus is that Libre Office is available for Windows and for Linux (I dual boot).

 

[USAFRet]

I recently upgraded to 2019 from 2016.
The main reason, is because I can get it for $15 from work.

If not for that, I'd still be on 2010 or LibreOffice.

 

[Giroro]

I still don't understand why I should continuously pay for office every year (forever) when my copy of office 2010 does absolutely everything (and more) than most people could ever want out of their word processing/slideshow/spreadsheet apps.
It does it faster too, because office 2010 doesn't hide the scroll bar randomly or add infuriatingly slow animations (that can't be disabled) on top of everything.

Heck, their basic features haven't even changed much since 2003. All they do is just repackage the same core behind progressively worse interfaces and gimmicks that end up taking more time to learn than they actually save.

 

[JohnMD1022]

Office 2000 still works fine.

And my wife uses Libre Office.

 

[logainofhades]

I still use office 2010, that I got from my old technet sub, some years back, on my desktop. I took advantage of a work discount, to get office 2016 cheap, for the laptop. I prefer 2010, personally. I see 0 reason to upgrade. I do simple docs in word, and used to have my budget made out, in Excel. Nothing that I couldn't do on an even older version of office. I have 0 interest in the cloud.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Office '97 still works fine as well and is more than capable of producing outstanding looking documents. The threshold for word processing and desktop publishing software capable of allowing skilled users to produce practically any document they can envision was crossed decades ago. Buying new versions or having constant updates isn't helping the bottom line anymore and produced documents aren't getting better as a result of the fancy new tools.

When I find myself and others in need of new office productivity software, not only are the free offerings more than sufficient, they don't screw with document formats to lock people into a particular office package.

 

[josh.axon]

So Microsoft pulled an Apple by only comparing to its own products like everyone else doesn't matter? Haha, not the best move but funny none the less.

 

[joshbollman]

So...am I the only person who likes Office 365? Everybody whines about it so much. I have 5 people on it and all people get 1TB of cloud storage with it.

Do you want to go back to paying $400 for one licensed disc with 3 activations? I specifically remember the only version of Office worth using costing that much. (I wanted Access and Publisher)

Do people live to be negative? Of course it is continual cash flow. Why are you reminding everybody?

Try finding 1TB per person with a 5 people plan for $100/year in cloud storage. I dare you. That's what they're selling. Nobody believes the software itself is worth a yearly renewal.

 

[g-unit1111]

So...am I the only person who likes Office 365? Everybody whines about it so much. I have 5 people on it and all people get 1TB of cloud storage with it.

Do you want to go back to paying $400 for one licensed disc with 3 activations? I specifically remember the only version of Office worth using costing that much. (I wanted Access and Publisher)

It's not bad. My gripes with Office 365 are mainly Outlook related and there's a few super annoying features that I would love to be able to turn off. If I could do that I would definitely prefer it. Having access to my Outlook e-mail through Firefox is a definite plus.

 

[Kridian]

It's why Adobe is so loathed with their Creative Cloud subscription/never-own-it-outright <removed> , and it has let competitors flourish with competing products.

The wallet speaks!

Language removed by moderator.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

So...am I the only person who likes Office 365? Everybody whines about it so much. I have 5 people on it and all people get 1TB of cloud storage with it.

Do you want to go back to paying $400 for one licensed disc with 3 activations? I specifically remember the only version of Office worth using costing that much. (I wanted Access and Publisher)

Do people live to be negative? Of course it is continual cash flow. Why are you reminding everybody?

Try finding 1TB per person with a 5 people plan for $100/year in cloud storage. I dare you. That's what they're selling. Nobody believes the software itself is worth a yearly renewal.

Just because a thing exists is not reason enough to like it. The purpose behind Office 365 is to generate perpetual income for Microsoft. Turning a product that folks are used to having perpetual access to, once paid for, into a monthly or yearly billed service, is not grounds for liking that product.

Until Microsoft offers me value I need and can't find equivalency to in Office 365, nothing about it compels me to like it.

Who needs 1TB of cloud storage in the first place? For many folks, this is a product that went in search of a market. If I'm sending somebody else a document, they shouldn't necessarily get access to my cloud storage. If I'm simply going someplace else and want access to my document, cloud storage may be handy, but I have even greater control and reliability using something like a USB drive. I don't need to rely on being connected to the internet for that to work, and nothing from an unplugged USB drive can ever be lost or stolen by the online community.

OneDrive that shipped all the way back with Windows 8 had plenty of cloud storage, and it's umm, free, but if you need more, that can be purchased.

Ultimately though, if I need 1TB of cloud storage, it either better be for mostly cold storage, or I need to rethink the way I'm storing things. 1TB is not a practical amount of data to suck through most internet connections on a regular basis.

 

[USAFRet]

Who needs 1TB of cloud storage in the first place?

People with on a Surface, and a single small drive in it.
Not me, but I can see the use for some people.

Similar to Asus giving me 1TB cloud space when I bought my little Transformer a couple of years ago. Never used it, but it was there.

 

[randomizer]

And because Office 365 is subscription-based, it gets constant updates...

You say that like it's a good thing. :lol:

And that’s ignoring the advantages Office 365 has as a web-based service over the native version.

Yeah, like service outages.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

It only takes one day without internet to realize how bad of a concept an online requirement for otherwise offline services is. It's like having a light bulb without electricity. Completely useless for it's intended purpose.

In the case of these stupid software as a service offerings, arbitrary contrivances for the sole purposes of giving corporations a hook into their users' wallets, here's to hoping both the trend and the companies pushing it die off.

 

[logainofhades]

Having access to my Outlook e-mail through Firefox is a definite plus.

I only use outlook at work, and I have a company iPhone, that can access it when out of the office, so not even that appeals to me. There is literally nothing in the current versions of office, that I need, or want.

 

[g-unit1111]

Having access to my Outlook e-mail through Firefox is a definite plus.

I only use outlook at work, and I have a company iPhone, that can access it when out of the office, so not even that appeals to me. There is literally nothing in the current versions of office, that I need, or want.

Same. But there are a few rare occasions when I need to access my e-mail outside of work so having login access is much better than having to make a trip to the office.

 

[Math Geek]

needed some kind of office on a win 7 VM i'm working with in class. school gives us 365 for free so i figured i'd give it a shot and install that to my VM. once it finally installed my VM slowed to a crawl and the network was almost unresponsive.

then i got the pop-up from the network monitor on the pc that told me, my VM was being kicked off the network as it was under attack!! MS hit it so hard and so fast with Lord knows how many connection attempts that our network actually thought i was being attacked from some nefarious actor. that'll be the first and only time i ever install 365.

not really a fan of libreoffice so i guess i'll be bringing in a copy of 2007 like i use at home so i can have some basic office apps on my VM when needed.

 

[logainofhades]

That's what the company iPhone is for. I also can remote into my work PC, at work, using screen connect, so even if I did not have the phone, I wouldn't need outlook on my home pc.