An Office Watch reader has added his own suggestions for important parts of Microsoft Word history (and Office) that Microsoft has forgotten and would like paying customers to ignore in their revisionist history of Word.
All these remarks result from Microsoft’s increasing demands for more money from customers. Lot’s of little changes all focused on getting customers onto the Microsoft 365 annual subscription treadmill.
‘Fixed’ Support
“ My “favorite” is the 10yr support. “
For a long time Microsoft Office has a ‘fixed’ lifecycle of ten years. Five years of ‘mainstream’ support then another five years of reduced ‘extended’ support.
But the term ‘Fixed’ doesn’t mean the same thing in Microsoft’s lexicon that it does in any other dictionary.
Modern Office 2019/2021 has only FIVE years of support.
Keep Office price the same
“ “kept the price the same”, while reducing allowed installations of Office Home from 3 computers to 1, and “support” (that is another slippery term) from 10 years to 5 to 1 (365)”
So from ~$150 for Office 2010 Home and Student (and earlier) that allowed install on 3 computers at the same time for 10 years, down to 2021 allowing 1 computer for 5 years, vs 365 which will cost $1000 for 10 years subscription. Yes, if you take “full” advantage of 365 Home, 5/6 users and 5 computers each the per computer per year cost comes down, but frankly how many families/users do that? Personally, the only way I know of to use all of those computers would be in a “Brady Bunch” of nerds, or in a retirement home where the “family” is and they “cheat” by sharing email accounts so 5 people can sign in on different devices at the same time with a single email. “
Note: the number of allowed installations of any perpetual licence Microsoft Office varies depending on the exact purchase made. In particular Retail vs the slightly cheaper OEM (always limited to one install on the computer Office was purchased with).
It’s true that the price of Microsoft Office has been relatively stable over the years, despite the many improvements and additions made in each version.
Microsoft has done that by gradually reducing what you get for that price and also adding online activation technology which allows the company to enforce use of Office more closely.
As always, we welcome your feedback. All comments are kept confidential and no names published (just like the remarks above).
