The Death Knell of Microsoft Office

A lot of people use Microsoft Office products both in business and home environments. If you use it at home, then you are more inclined to want to use it at work, and vice versa. Microsoft make an absolute killing on corporate licences – they even have their own auditing business that makes sure people have the right number of licences. Microsoft have built an ecosystem on compatibility, changing things up a little here and there just ensure that the free alternatives (OpenOffice, Libre Office, Google Docs) aren’t quite there yet. For IT departments and buyers, to bastardise a phrase originally made for IBM, “nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft stuff”. It is a compelling argument

To ensure that people have access to this cash cow, they make student licences super cheap (this is the modus operandi of a lot of software companies) or even basically turning a blind eye to pirate copies (as in China) as they know that if people get used to the software they will stick with it iteration after iteration and want to work with it.

And Microsoft Office is a good product. It works. MS Access and PowerPoint cannot be bettered by the free alternatives so power users need it. But for the rest of us, we probably don’t. People had a hissy fit (myself included) regarding the revamping of Office 2007 but we dealt with it and can now use it as before. Which seems a bit odd, as actually doing business stuff hasn’t really changed since the 90s and basically Office hasn’t either. It’s just got bulkier and more irascible like an elderly Jabba the Hut.

So Office has been bumbling along, possibly in decline but still made folders of money from hapless businesses. But Microsoft just made a very big mistake. A huge one. For single users of Office 2013, they will no longer let you install a copy of Office more than once. The version you buy or download will forever be tied to one machine. If you muck up your computer, then you will need to purchase a new version costing from between £50 - £350. No longer will you be able to buy a version and keep it as a backup to install on your new machine when you replace it or fix your own machine. That’s me done. I have used the free alternatives and straddled the fence up to now, but I am going free for good.