Microsoft unveils iPad Office suite

[WillysJeepMan]

I wasn't too pleased by the "subscription only" aspect of Office for iPad. But it did get me to look at Office 365 package in general. 5 computers, 5 mobile devices is intriguing. What is appealing is being able to work with files on virtually all of the devices in our home across OSX, iOS, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows RT, and Android with the same apps. Very helpful since my wife and I do a lot of file sharing and collaborating.

I shopped around and found a 1 yr subscription for $65. I can give it a try for that price.

We own LibreOffice, NeoOffice, iWorks, and Office Professional 2003, but creating documents such that they are interchangeable with that set results in nothing more complicated than "WordPad".

It'll be interesting.

[pl001]

I also hate this trend towards subscription services. It has a place, but it's quite clear the long-term goal is to have everything subscription based. That gives them a steady stream of income and locks you into their other online services. True personal computing is becoming a thing of the past.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

I shopped around and found a 1 yr subscription for $65. I can give it a try for that price.

mentioned earlier in the thread

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

And oh yeah, if you are one of the first 50 to walk into a MS store tomorrow with an iPad. You get a year of 365 for free.

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I know, but I paid £10 each for them two years ago

Me too. But they are worth $10 each whereas MS Office is not worth $100/year. I've used Pages, Numbers, Keynote for two years now, and I'll be using them for a few more years. Even at just two years that comes to $15/year or $30 total. Keep MS Office for 2 years and you wind up paying $200. No doubt MS Office is a better suite of apps, but not enough to warrant that much money.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Me too. But they are worth $10 each whereas MS Office is not worth $100/year. I've used Pages, Numbers, Keynote for two years now, and I'll be using them for a few more years. Even at just two years that comes to $15/year or $30 total. Keep MS Office for 2 years and you wind up paying $200. No doubt MS Office is a better suite of apps, but not enough to warrant that much money.

I totally agree. I can only assume Microsoft only wants businesses as they seem to be completely out of touch with normal users.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Me too. But they are worth $10 each whereas MS Office is not worth $100/year. I've used Pages, Numbers, Keynote for two years now, and I'll be using them for a few more years. Even at just two years that comes to $15/year or $30 total. Keep MS Office for 2 years and you wind up paying $200. No doubt MS Office is a better suite of apps, but not enough to warrant that much money.

$100/y seems pretty reasonable to me for up to 5 computers AND 5 mobile devices. $20 per year if you install on all 5 PCs you're allowed to. A standalone copy of Office costs several hundred $, and that's for only one PC.

[Jessica Lares]

WillysJeepMan, you OWN a Surface, why would you want Office on your iPad?

Serious question as the bigger screen is probably better for Office anyway.

Originally Posted by HarryT

$100/y seems pretty reasonable to me for up to 5 computers AND 5 mobile devices. $20 per year if you install on all 5 PCs you're allowed to. A standalone copy of Office costs several hundred $, and that's for only one PC.

Unless they changed their policy, you used to be able to install Office on at least two, if not three, computers. Those of us who already have Office on our computers don't need this new version on them. I'm one of those people who only upgrade Office about every other time, and keep in mind that Office is only updated once every few years. So this cloud crap is IMO just a way to bilk us out of more money. The same with Adobe Photoshop. I crunched the numbers and it would cost me 2-1/2 times more for Adobe's cloud crap than it did for buying every other upgrade. Neither Adobe nor MS ever seem to turn out major updates to their flagship products. Their updates are mostly incremental and not worth the money to update every single time.

[HarryT]

Not disagreeing with you, Jack. I'm still using Office 2007 on my desktop machine. The only point of contention was simply your comment that "Office isn't worth $100 a year", because for, say, a family with several PCs, the cost per PC is pretty modest. But whatever suits the individual, obviously.

[jhowell]

I use Microsoft Office regularly and already subscribe to Office 365 and so I tried Word for iPad. It was very disappointing. I immediately ran into limitations in even the most basic features.

It seems to display existing documents pretty well, except for fonts. You have a fairly large, but fixed, set of fonts to choose from and embedded fonts are not supported.

Just about every option that in word is customizable down to fractions of an inch/cm are reduced to selections from a limited set of choices. For example page sizes, margins, indents, line spacing, etc. You can use existing styles, but I didn't see any way to modify or create new ones. Just about every feature of Word beyond simple text editing is missing. And there is no way to print.

All in all it is much closer to being WordPad than Word.

[Josieb1]

When we bought our new laptops in 2010 we bought Office 2010, the licence for three pcs. At the time I think it cost less than £80.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

When we bought our new laptops in 2010 we bought Office 2010, the licence for three pcs. At the time I think it cost less than £80.

Hmm...it sounds like you got the Home and Student 2010 Family Pack? Includes a license for 3 PCs, and only for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and One Note.

Office 365 includes 5 PCs or Macs, and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note, Publisher, Access, and Outlook. As Harry said, if you use all 5 licenses, you're paying $20/year per computer.

For me, it's very much worth it.

Shari

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

WillysJeepMan, you OWN a Surface, why would you want Office on your iPad?

Serious question as the bigger screen is probably better for Office anyway.

I can understand your confusion.

IF all of the things I need/want to do with a tablet could be done with the Surface then I wouldn't want Office on the iPad... I'd get rid of the iPad.

But there are still many apps/functions that I have on the iPad that are not available for the Surface... and when similar functionality exists, it is almost always inferior to the iOS versions.

On the other hand, the Surface 2 can do much more than is possible with the iPad. My ideal solution would be the Surface 2 hardware with the iOS app mix.

I use the iPad as a tablet that in a pinch can act like a netbook whereas the Suface 2 is a netbook (of sorts) that can act like a tablet.

We're a pretty hi-tech household. Depending upon what my day looks like will determine which device I grab as I'm going out the door. Having a highly functional common core of applications across operating systems and devices has great value to us... cuts down on frustration and rework.

[HarryT]

I run "real" Office on my Surface Pro. Works very well.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by shalym

Hmm...it sounds like you got the Home and Student 2010 Family Pack? Includes a license for 3 PCs, and only for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and One Note.

Office 365 includes 5 PCs or Macs, and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note, Publisher, Access, and Outlook. As Harry said, if you use all 5 licenses, you're paying $20/year per computer.

For me, it's very much worth it.

Shari

We probably did but then I only use word and excel. There is a market for users like me who never touch the other functionality.