The end of Microsoft Office
Well, it isn’t actually the end of Microsoft Office. Its more like the first major re-brand that office has had in the past three decades. Microsoft office is going to be re-branded as Microsoft 365.
Microsoft365 is actually Microsofts response to a sort of software as a service which was set up many years ago as something the market required. It has moved away from just being online to also being able to download the applications to your devices, which you can actively work on.
On 7th November 2022 Microsoft made it public that the 2021 version of Microsoft office was the final version that was going to be released. Although they are saying the Microsoft Office 2021 is the end of office, they will be still be selling one time purchase licences for it. So it is not the end to our Microsoft apps, what is going to happen is Microsoft365 is going to have continuous changes effected to it, and not every three years you get a new version.
With the re-brand comes a change in pricing plan. With Microsoft office, you were able to purchase a licence and use it lifelong. With Microsoft 365, it is a yearly subscription to the software. It is somewhat of a good and bad thing. So every year you pay your subscription and get access to your full set of applications. As well as what gets thrown in, is a terabyte of cloud storage.
There are two types of personal subscriptions that we could purchase:
- A personal subscription, which is for a single individual. It is for one user with up to five devices. It comes with access to all applications, as well as the one terabyte of free cloud storage. This costs R999 a year.
- A family subscription, which is suited between two to six people. It is for up to six users, with five devices per user. It comes with access to all applications, as well as the one terabyte of free cloud storage for each user. This costs R1300 per year.
The family subscription works out much cheaper than the personal subscription. Realistically speaking you could buy it and share it with your friends and family, sharing the cost instead of paying R999 each.
What are the benefits of Microsoft 365?
- Obviously the first thing is the one terabyte of free cloud storage. If you have to purchase one terabyte of cloud storage by itself, it will come to much more than the price of the subscription.
- Flexibility is another advantage, with the cloud storage you can drop and download files across multiple devices.
- We are going to receive automatic updates with Microsoft 365.