I feel that convincing people to pay monthly/yearly for something that has minimal monthly recurring expenditure/investment from the provider (unlike utilities, streaming services, etc.) is one of the biggest cons of the modern era.<p>I have Office 2010 on an old computer. While it lacks some modern features of Microsoft 365 (for example, Office 2010 is much, much faster), it still works seamlessly with any files I create in 365. And I only had to pay, once, about the same amount that Microsoft is charging for a year's use of the same suite in the present day.<p>So they throw in a few gigs of OneDrive to supposedly justify the cost? That vendor lock-in is obviously part of the con (see for instance the complete and very deliberate lack of portability of documents created in OneNote, if you don't have the Professional/Enterprise version). And there are innumerable better services out there, many of which are even free.
For those unaware, if you want to use the latest Office Suite (2024), but don’t want to pay a monthly fee, Microsoft still offers a one time purchase [0] for $149.99 which is now cheaper than the (new) one year subscription (with no cloud storage of course).<p>[0] <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-2024/cfq7ttc0pqvj" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...</a>
I find it increasingly hard to justify any sort of SaaS subscription these days. Is the value you get out of Microsoft 365 really that much greater than any of the open source alternatives? So much better that you let a corporation dictate the terms of your computing environment?<p>It honestly makes me angry. And I say that as someone who works in the industry for a SaaS company. The only SaaS I reluctantly pay for is Fastmail and that's only because it's basically impossible to host your own email these days if you care about your email actually getting delivered to all those Gmail and Outlook inboxes out there.
How’s that a surprise? Microsoft dangles npm, TypeScript, GitHub, and VSCode, and suddenly people develop collective amnesia about their past behavior.
I cannot think of a single non-business oriented user who needs MS365<p>Trivial personal users moved to free alternatives ages ago, business users are either using organizational licenses or are small-business users who aren't using family plans to begin with.<p>I'm mystified by who the affected audience is of this.
> <i>Rather than sneaking an extra $5 a month, perhaps Microsoft should focus its efforts on making Copilot valuable enough that its customers will actually be willing to pay for it.</i><p>Someone at MS with a sleek haircut will hold a PPT demonstrating how both Copilot usage and subscription income went up.
I use LibreOffice instead of Microsoft 365. It is free and can load and save DOCX files. Plus I use LibreOffice in GNU/Linux so it is cross-platform and compatible.
"Frankly, we feel this is a flagrant breach of goodwill and trust for Microsoft’s customers"<p>Clearly they haven't been Microsoft customers very long, if there's still goodwill and trust.
So Microsoft believes it can only sell its AI application through a significant dark pattern. That isn't very convincing advertising for copilot at all.
This tactic is more common than you’d think. It usually goes like <amount> off the first period, regular price afterwards. Wait you want to cancel? How about this <amount> coupon for your next <period> as well? I’ve seen that many times.
> That’s when a new option will miraculously appear – Microsoft 365 Classic, which has no price increase or Copilot AI. In other words, it’s your old plan.<p>That seems almost malicious
I just use Libreoffice for home needs. My daughter has access to Libreoffice too but prefers to use Google docs for everything. I think there is a whole generation of students growing up on Google docs, mainly pushed by schools, and that will have some impact on office productivity space in another 10-15 years when they start to work.
If anyone would like to try an alternative to Copilot for Excel, I've been working on an addin that is designed more for advanced users who know what they want. It's currently free while it's in beta and I gather feedback to improve it.<p>It can be used to quickly add conditional formatting rules, charts, pivot tables, formulas, perform data manipulation tasks that you would have to use VBA for, etc. It's also private - it doesn't include the data in prompts, only metadata (table headers, etc).<p>I'm sending invites out as they are requested. You can request an invite here: <a href="https://www.incant.app/" rel="nofollow">https://www.incant.app/</a>
I get why they bundle in the AI update and blame the cost on that ... but it would almost be interesting to see that if it was up front people would chose it if it was more transparent.<p>Less money overall maybe, but also tell you if people want it / see the value...
I have an even cheaper suggestion: doing like me, using org-mode for notes and small potatoes computation, Python for more complex stuff, rarely Maxima CAS, and LaTeX to produce documents. All these tools offer much bigger features set, much bigger flexibility, produce much better results and are FLOSS tools.<p>Seriously the MIT Missing Semester MUST be a high-schools mandatory course, anyone who want to have a non-mere-manual profession must have passed this course. We are in damn 2025, it's about time to recognize that computers are the mean of knowledge like papers and libraries before, not knowing how to use them properly means being illiterate, even with some PhDs.
A few years ago, I saw that OneDrive announced plans to launch its own AI-powered facial recognition grouping feature, but as of 2025, the feature still hasn't been released. I don't think I'll be paying for it anymore.
Once upon a time Microsoft was forced to unbundle Explorer which they pushed bundled with Windows. I just wonder whether here we not again have Microsoft leveraging their office monopoly to gain market share by unfair means.
Would most folk notice any difference using Google Docs or iCloud docs for free? I don't get the rationale for paying for an word processor monthly. Is it the fuzzy, warm feeling that using Microsoft gives you?
Microsoft Partner Network. $500 a year includes five seats of Office 365 Enterprise and $100 a month in Azure credit. On top of Visual Studio Pro and a bunch of other perks.
I REALLY don't want any AI junk in my apps, and I especially don't want to pay extra for it.<p>Apple AI is terrible and Microsoft's is likely the same.
They have to keep jacking up prices so their SAFe(TM) certified trainers, scrum masters, coaches, consultants and such can continue to provide additional value
the only reason Im still paying for M365 is that my grandpa can't use anything else than MS Word, despite of all the awful changes MS made to its UI thought out the years.<p>Old people stubborness can be interesting.<p>Maintening that subscription is a pain, as MS occasionally change default save location to SharePoint. I'm the sole admin and I've never touched any thing.
Makes me wonder what it would take for governments to actually hit Microsoft hard enough for it to hurt. I remember when they were hit with anti-trust fines here in the USA due to how they were bundling Internet Explorer as the default browser. I mean, did they ever stop? I can't recall ever turning on a new Windows install in the past couple decades and not having IE or Edge as the default.<p>It also makes me wonder what it would take for IT people to finally stop gritting their teeth about having to use, or having to let others use, Windows and start just dealing with the learning curve of switching to some Linux distro. I mean, Windows Recall is spyware. If it didn't come from Microsoft, Windows Defender would be sure to mark it as malicious... What's the name for a screenshot based keylogger I wonder...<p>I used to just figure that Windows was just all some people could use. And if that was the best tool for them, then ok. But now? I can't say that anymore. It's out and out malware at this point.<p>In all seriousness, if you are sticking with Windows at this point, why? Is it just the fact your other software doesn't work on another OS? Or is there something good about Windows that you like?
> But crucially, 365 plans don’t provide unlimited access to Copilot – that requires an extra $37/month subscription called Copilot Pro. Instead, the plans provide a bank of 60 credits per month, where each credit pays for one action that makes use of Copilot.<p>Wow I missed this part of the story. It’s incredibly shitty. The are basically making the whole world pay $5 a month for a _trial _ of Copilot ?
Notice the glowing pr articles about how Satya’s Microsoft is so amazing and not like the old chiseling for cash Microsoft are gone.<p>Time to collect the rent, peasants.
Recommended strategy instead:<p>1. Change your credit card number so that you cannot be billed anymore<p>2. Use a free and open source alternative. They're good enough at this point<p>Otherwise you're just funding their grift.