Microsoft Office 2010 - support ending in October

[najaB]

I don't like rentware, which is basically what a subscription based package is. It ties you in to your data, so it then becomes a big task to migrate to a different application later on.

How is that any different to purchasing a licence?

 

[najaB]

Well some do, some don't, it used to drive me up the wall when my some of my IT colleagues said we needed to upgrade to the latest version of this and that, and I would ask what the actual benefit was was? to which the answer was frequently very little. Obviously you have balance that against becoming too out of date as upgrading can be difficult and costly, but I'm not a fan of SaaS and particularly for something like Office, I would rather buy the software and run it for a number of years, but you pays your money and take your choice.

Which is why I said "something that appears up to date" rather than the bleeding edge. There's no reason not to run hardware/software that's a couple of years old, and no excuse for running software/hardware that's ten years out of date.

 

[DB]

How is that any different to purchasing a licence?

It means you have to keep paying the subscription, which isn't the case with a one-off purchase - and if the software company goes bust or stops offering the product, you are stuck if it's a subscription.

With some software it's not generally a good idea to use them it once it doesn't get updates (e.g. Office), but with much software it's not a major issue.

 

[malc-c]

Well some do, some don't, it used to drive me up the wall when my some of my IT colleagues said we needed to upgrade to the latest version of this and that, and I would ask what the actual benefit was was? to which the answer was frequently very little. Obviously you have balance that against becoming too out of date as upgrading can be difficult and costly, but I'm not a fan of SaaS and particularly for something like Office, I would rather buy the software and run it for a number of years, but you pays your money and take your choice.

Between 2007 and 2012 I worked for a company as an IT technician. Our department was small, just two technicians and two managers, one for day to day stuff and the other for planning / website / and future proofing the business. Our upgrade "policy" was to replace PCs every three years (later changed to 5 years to save cost), servers every three years, and when it came to software we always waited until a service pack was released for an OS before rolling it out to the 100+ staff. They didn't operate a bulk licencing policy, so it meant keeping track of what physical copy of office was installed on each PC's so auditing was always "fun" having to keep track of 100+ serial keys, and meant that often PC rebuilds took ages as all the physical disks that came with the PC needed to be re-installed, rather than imaging them. Servers used CALs, so we just purchased more licences if required, typically in blocks of 5.

We seldom had a major issue that resulted in poor productivity, and for the most, staff were able to do their roles with little or no downtime.

 

[DB]

Between 2007 and 2012 I worked for a company as an IT technician. Our department was small, just two technicians and two managers, one for day to day stuff and the other for planning / website / and future proofing the business. Our upgrade "policy" was to replace PCs every three years (later changed to 5 years to save cost), servers every three years, and when it came to software we always waited until a service pack was released for an OS before rolling it out to the 100+ staff. They didn't operate a bulk licencing policy, so it meant keeping track of what physical copy of office was installed on each PC's so auditing was always "fun" having to keep track of 100+ serial keys, and meant that often PC rebuilds took ages as all the physical disks that came with the PC needed to be re-installed, rather than imaging them. Servers used CALs, so we just purchased more licences if required, typically in blocks of 5.

I think that in terms of hardware the lifespan has actually increased with desktops at least - a reasonable one which is six or even seven years old is generally fine for basic office-type tasks, provided it has a reasonable amount of RAM (8GB minimum), and an SSD. I've upgraded a load of our older computers with SSDs, and it makes a significant speed difference - for sixty quid, the lifespan can be increased by 18 months.

With installable software, I'm finding that we actually buy less than we did a few years ago as so many things are now some sort of online service (SaaS effectively). Of the installable stuff we do still use, an increasing proportion is subscription rather than one-off purchase.

 

[malc-c]

How is that any different to purchasing a licence?

When you purchase a product such as Office it came with an installation key which is the licence key to use that application. Once installed I have that application for life, and I can uninstall and reinstall it on new hardware as I upgrade. It also means that if the manufactures stop supporting it, or go bust, or cease trading it doesn't affect my data or stop me using the software.

If the software uses an subscription model, and they cease trading or their servers go off line, then I have no access to my data, or the application won't run and again I can't access the data, even if that data is stored locally and not on the cloud.

Think about it as like taking out a personal hire contract for a new car... you pay monthly "repayments" but at the end of the three year contract you don't actually own the car. You can then "upgrade" to a newer model and repeat the process. But stop paying the monthly fees and the car is removed and you can no longer use it... However if you went out and purchased a car from day one then you can continue to use that for as long as the car lasts.

 

[malc-c]

I think that in terms of hardware the lifespan has actually increased with desktops at least - a reasonable one which is six or even seven years old is generally fine for basic office-type tasks, provided it has a reasonable amount of RAM (8GB minimum), and an SSD. I've upgraded a load of our older computers with SSDs, and it makes a significant speed difference - for sixty quid, the lifespan can be increased by 18 months.

With installable software, I'm finding that we actually buy less than we did a few years ago as so many things are now some sort of online service (SaaS effectively). Of the installable stuff we do still use, an increasing proportion is subscription rather than one-off purchase.

I have to agree with you with regards to the hardware. Put 8GB of ram and an SSD in an old machine and performs just as good as a modern machine ( I have an old 3rd gen I5 HP 8200 SFF in the study with 8GB Ram and a 500GB SSD and it boots just as quick as my main Ryzen 5 / 16GB machine !). Regretfully I am no longer in touch with the guys I worked with so have no idea what their current practices are regarding software licencing...but when I left we were moving more and more towards bulk licencing and a monthly subscription which not only covered updates, but support for the application to

 

[nlogax]

It's fair to say the perpetual licensing model is slowly on its way out across the board, both for consumer and enterprise software. Which it's always nice to find an ancient software title on CD (Photoshop CS2 my own personal example) which works quite happily with Windows 10 even though it's at least ten to fifteen years old.

 

[ainsworth74]

About two years ago I was involved in a minor disagreement with my boss over Office. He was willing to pay for Microsoft rather than taking us down the freeware route but wanted to get the pay once versions of Home and Business at £120-odd a pop whilst I was advocating that we sign up as a Charity with Microsoft and then get massively discounted* Office 365 subscriptions which comes with all the corporate enterprise level bells and whistles like 1TB of OneDrive storage, SharePoint, Teams, Forms and all sorts of doohickeys I've probably never even known about in the first place let alone forgotten about. I won the argument eventually and when the pandemic hit my boss did confess that he was pleased I'd pressed for 365 as we'd have been sunk without all the cloud based services we've slowly been integrating into our way of work in the lead up to the pandemic and have then been reliant on during! So colour me a fan of Microsoft 365 and all it has done in the corporate sphere.

On a personal level I've been using 365 for a year or two now at home but then I have the applications installed on three different machines (used by two people I hasten to add not just me!) so the breakdown works quite well particularly as we're going fifty-fifty on the cost. I'd recommend it to anyone but only if you're going to be using it across multiple machines and/or able to split the cost. For one person on one machine you're probably better of just buying the latest version of the Home edition and using that.

*I'm not kidding for registered charities get E1 licenses for free whilst E3s are £4 per user per month compared to £6 and £28.10 per user per month respectively. Plus a host of other sorts of licences for other software that we're not using. Thanks Microsoft for your corporate responsibility kick

 

[nlogax]

+1 on the 365 comments. This is not the same Microsoft many of us struggled with through the 1990s and early 2000s IT industry!

 

[malc-c]

This thread is slightly off topic as we're now comparing how things are in the corporate sector rather than the home user, where naturally companies are often moving with the times and using cloud based applications and data storage and reaping the benefits of accessing that data worldwide for a one off monthly monthly / annual fee. But for the home consumer there is little to be had IMO by running cloud based applications over having it installed locally on a pc/laptop.

 

[Crossover]

When you purchase a product such as Office it came with an installation key which is the licence key to use that application. Once installed I have that application for life, and I can uninstall and reinstall it on new hardware as I upgrade. It also means that if the manufactures stop supporting it, or go bust, or cease trading it doesn't affect my data or stop me using the software.

As I understand it, one purchasing the right to use the software, not the software itself (something one of my colleagues is keen to point out!)

Also, even if you go down the O365 route, you don't have to save your data to the cloud - I am running Apps for Enterprise on my home machine I am typing this on now and haven't saved any documents to OneDrive.

 

[mmh]

This thread is slightly off topic as we're now comparing how things are in the corporate sector rather than the home user, where naturally companies are often moving with the times and using cloud based applications and data storage and reaping the benefits of accessing that data worldwide for a one off monthly monthly / annual fee. But for the home consumer there is little to be had IMO by running cloud based applications over having it installed locally on a pc/laptop.

Office 365 is more to do with the acquisition route and the licencing model than not having local software. There are "online" versions of the apps, but also ones which are installed locally as ever. They're installed over the Internet, which is the default for virtually all software now anyway, few computers come with CD drives any more.

 

[DB]

Also, even if you go down the O365 route, you don't have to save your data to the cloud - I am running Apps for Enterprise on my home machine I am typing this on now and haven't saved any documents to OneDrive.

Try to stop it though! I'm currently planning a roll-out of the installed Office 365 programs, and I've not found a way yet to actually block Onedrive and Sharepoint access, or to make it default to a local network location for saving (there is an option for this when writing the install scripts, but it seems to be completely ignored in practice, whatver you try to set it as). And in a business environment, some people are going to just save to the default location so this does need to be where you actually want them to save things.

As regards the points about Open Source, while that's fine for home use it's not really adequate for businesses with more than a handful of staff in most cases - in our case, we have other systems (CRM, finance database) which use Office add-ins quite a lot, plus there is the issue of User familiarity. And there's no Outlook equivalent with comparable features. Frankly, I wish there was an alternative as Office 365 is a convoluted mess and the back end services have habit of changing every five minutes, but the reality has to be faced!

 

[DB]

Office 365 is more to do with the acquisition route and the licencing model than not having local software. There are "online" versions of the apps, but also ones which are installed locally as ever. They're installed over the Internet, which is the default for virtually all software now anyway, few computers come with CD drives any more.

Yes, indeed - the point is that the installed ones report in at least once a month and go into read-only mode if there isn't an active subscription, whereas one-off purchases such as Office 2019 don't do this.

I don't think anyone uses the online versions of Office more than they have to - yes, they're fine for reading a document and a bit of editing, but are still a long way inferior to the installed equivalents.

 

[malc-c]

As I understand it, one purchasing the right to use the software, not the software itself (something one of my colleagues is keen to point out!)

I have to disagree here, because you actually have a physical product in the form of the CD, (well in the case of Office 2007, or PS CS2 and many of the mainstream products of that time before downloadable delivery became the norm). So you are purchasing a product, and the licence key forms part of it.

 

[DB]

I have to disagree here, because you actually have a physical product in the form of the CD, (well in the case of Office 2007, or PS CS2 and many of the mainstream products of that time before downloadable delivery became the norm). So you are purchasing a product, and the licence key forms part of it.

Not really - you are purchasing a perpetual license to use the software. This is not the same as actually owning it.

 

[malc-c]

Yes, indeed - the point is that the installed ones report in at least once a month and go into read-only mode if there isn't an active subscription, whereas one-off purchases such as Office 2019 don't do this.

The company I worked for used shared an Excel workbook as a backup to the bespoke job management software, and I can imagine the chaos that would cause if the dozen or so users were locked out of editing that file because the application couldn't communicate with the subscription server to confirm the bill had been paid!!

The other issue with the constant trend of MS upgrading products is with 3rd party add-ons. The phone system was upgraded to one that also integrated with Outlook to form part of the multi-media chat and email support so the call centre could deal with live chat, voice calls and email support tickets directly in Outlook. This involved the installation of a plug-in on all the machines that were used by call centre staff. MS then released a Office 2010 and when we tested this with the plug-in it didn't work. So we were restricted to running office 2007 on those machines until the 3rd party company could produce a new plug-in that worked with the newer version of Outlook and be backwardly compatible if need be.

 

[najaB]

If the software uses an subscription model, and they cease trading or their servers go off line, then I have no access to my data, or the application won't run and again I can't access the data, even if that data is stored locally and not on the cloud.

That's not even close to true for Microsoft 365. If the subscription expires then the application goes into read-only mode (after 30 days), you can access your data, print files, etc. you just can't save new versions of the documents. It's been a while since I've worked with the admin side of SharePoint but it used to be the same for files stored in the cloud: you could download copies of the files for at least 30 days, after which you would lose access.

 

[najaB]

I have to agree with you with regards to the hardware. Put 8GB of ram and an SSD in an old machine and performs just as good as a modern machine...

While it might perform acceptably in office productivity applications, it won't perform as well as a new PC.

Just look at CPUs: my ten-year old AMD Phenom 9550 has four cores at 2.2GHz with a rated TDP of 95W. My new AMD Ryzen 3 3200G has 4 cores at 3.6GHz with a rated TDP of 65W. 61% of the clock speed with 146% of the power draw isn't "just as good", it is objectively worse.

 

[MotCO]

That depends on the period that you look at it over - if you're happy to use software that is 5 or more years old then outright purchase is probably the way to go, but if you prefer to upgrade the subscription model is the way to go (not to mention the lower initial capital outlay).

I'm slightly confused. When you say upgrade, do you refer to the regular updates / patches Microsoft issue, or would your subscription allow you to move from, say, Office 16 to Office 19? I have purchased Office 16 and get the regular updates.

 

[DB]

I'm slightly confused. When you say upgrade, do you refer to the regular updates / patches Microsoft issue, or would your subscription allow you to move from, say, Office 16 to Office 19? I have purchased Office 16 and get the regular updates.

The subscription versions don't have a 'year' as such - they are regularly updated and receive new features and security updates, whereas the 'one-off' purchase versions (2016/2019, etc) receive security updates but not (generally) new features. Therefore the subscription versions will always be the most up-to-date in terms of features, apart from possibly when a new one-off version has just come out, when they will be at the same level.

It's a similar model to Windows 10, where there are security updates every month and a 'feature update' which is effectively a new version every six months (although the timings with Office aren't necessarily the same, the principal still applies).

 

[ainsworth74]

I have to disagree here, because you actually have a physical product in the form of the CD, (well in the case of Office 2007, or PS CS2 and many of the mainstream products of that time before downloadable delivery became the norm). So you are purchasing a product, and the licence key forms part of it.

The last time I bought an Office product (probably 2015ish) it very much did not come with a CD and just a card with the key on it.

 

[DB]

The last time I bought an Office product (probably 2015ish) it very much did not come with a CD and just a card with the key on it.

Pretty much nothing from Microsoft has come on CD/DVDs for ages.

The only thing I can think of which still does is OEM Windows 10. The retail version doesn't - it's either a download, or a USB stick in the case of retail packaging. Not aware of anything else from Microsoft in terms of client softwarae which is more than a key and a download now.

Same on the server side - only one which might still be a DVD here is Windows Server if bought OEM or retail (not sure about this), but I get this through volume licensing which is the usual key and download situation.

 

[najaB]

I'm slightly confused. When you say upgrade, do you refer to the regular updates / patches Microsoft issue, or would your subscription allow you to move from, say, Office 16 to Office 19? I have purchased Office 16 and get the regular updates.

With the software subscriptions you get version upgrades rather than just security updates. As @DavidB noted, they've moved away from year numbers - you just get Word 365 which will have all the features of the latest standalone 'year' build of Word, and so on with the other applications.

 

[Springs Branch]

Thanks for everyone's suggestions & comments.

I'm thinking my strategy should be to install one of the free Office look-a-like packages and start getting familiar with that before I need to do my next laptop upgrade.
Also prompted me to go searching for the original key (probably misplaced or "tidied up" by Mrs S.B.) for the Office 2010 I'm using now.

 

[najaB]

I'm thinking my strategy should be to install one of the free Office look-a-like packages and start getting familiar with that before I need to do my next laptop upgrade.

Libre Office is highly recommended, and what I would use if I didn't have MS Office through work.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I don't like rentware, which is basically what a subscription based package is. It ties you in to your data, so it then becomes a big task to migrate to a different application later on. I'm involved in a database application for keeping data on reptile collections. Originally the developer was in partnership with someone and they produced a standalone application that was a one off purchase for around $50. They parted company and years later the developer brought out a new application, but whilst is still ran local on the users PC, requires a live subscription of $6.99 pm for it to run. Granted it's not like having data in the cloud, but it means that anyone entering details of their collection, either as a hobbyist or business will lose access to that data if they cancel the subscription, so they are tied in for life effectively and could end up paying thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the application. Yes they/ we are constantly bring out updates and adding customer wish lists to the project for free, but I still feel uncomfortable locking people into the application like this.

To be honest, whilst I've been given a lifetime membership in return for my involvement in the new application, I still use his old program that I purchased years ago to maintain records on my collection of reptiles as I know I won't be faced with any access issue should we fall out or something happen to him and the servers are pulled.

Yeah. What you're describing is an awful combination of two separate bad, things - each, to my mind, somewhat unethical in isolation, but totally unethical when used in combination: Not allowing the option to buy software, and not providing an ability to export data.

I can kinda understand companies preferring people to 'rent' their software if the revenue stream and continued customer contact allows them to provide upgrades and support etc., or to provide file storage. But at the same time, it seems perverse not to allow people to buy software outright for a reasonable price if people prefer - given that, in most cases, once you have a piece of software installed and you've completely figured out how to use it, it's not that common to need lots of ongoing support from the seller.

But not providing a way to export your data in a standard format, so you can get to your data outside the app to me seems almost inexcusable - and a lot of apps are guilty of that. With the prevalence of - for example - XML - it's really not hard to write code to export and import pretty much any structured data while maintaining its structure. Without that feature, you are basically locked into an app for life. And as you say, if the app is only provided on a rental basis, that leaves you with an open-ended commitment to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to the developer. Definitely something to steer clear of if you can avoid it.

 

[najaB]

But at the same time, it seems perverse not to allow people to buy software outright for a reasonable price if people prefer - given that, in most cases, once you have a piece of software installed and you've completely figured out how to use it, it's not that common to need lots of ongoing support from the seller.

You can still purchase an traditional licence for Office so I don't get the point?

But not providing a way to export your data in a standard format, so you can get to your data outside the app to me seems almost inexcusable - and a lot of apps are guilty of that. With the prevalence of - for example - XML - it's really not hard to write code to export and import pretty much any structured data while maintaining its structure.

Right. Now give me an example of a major player in the cloud services space that actually does this.

 

[DB]

You can still purchase an traditional licence for Office so I don't get the point?

Right. Now give me an example of a major player in the cloud services space that actually does this.

As regards the second point I can't think of one either! I'm no great fan of the subscription model for various reasons, but it's generally possible to get data out OK, if sometimes not as straightforward as it could be.

As regards the 'one off' license though, there is definitely a problem here as Microsoft is doing everything it can to make it unattractive - primarily for business users at the moment, but I expect them to go further in due course - it very much seems to be the case that they want to phase it out entirely over time, as Adobe did with their software, and push everyone onto subscription services.