"You can have lunch with your
friends, catch the Black Plague, and have dinner with your
ancestors."
Microsoft may not be the Black Plague, depending on
who you ask, but some of their products go from life to afterlife
about that fast.
One day you purchase and download Microsoft Office
2010 and before the backup disk comes in the mail there's Microsoft
Office 2013. Everybody's used to change and it's no big deal if you
have to click one button to buy 2010 and another to buy 2013. But Microsoft
doesn't work like that, you buy the one they want you to or you get
nothing at all.
Don't take my word for it, ask Microsoft. I wanted
to buy Office 2010 and went to the Microsoft Store to buy it, and
every Office 2010 link I clicked took me to Office 2013 instead. I
asked Jennifer (not her real name), my Microsoft Chat Assistant, if
I could buy Office 2010 and she typed "No, since the
announcement of Office 2013 5 days ago we no longer sell Office
2010.". Microsoft has threatened the end of days for
Windows XP ever since Eve gave Adam the apple, yet Office 2010
doesn't get 5 days.
That was then, and this is now, and who cares?
Office 2010, 2013, or 365, what's the difference? Well, there are a
lot of people that would like an answer to that question, and
here's one.
$200 gets you Office 2010 and you own it, forever.
Office still comes in a variety of versions and you can spend more
or less depending on what you want. But there were some forward
thinking ideas like "SkyDrive" and "Office on Demand".
Office 2010 is still a strong solution, and may very well be where
businesses want to stop for now.
Skydrive lets you save files from your PC to the
Cloud so you can access them from somewhere else through the
internet. But it also lets you access other files on the PC from
somewhere else through the internet. A SkyDrive enabled PC can be
accessed from anywhere in the world, should you need those
important files.
Office on Demand gives you cloud based versions of
Word, Excel, and whatever else you bought into, to use with your
SkyDrive files. Not full featured versions but nice nevertheless.
Just go to the www.microsoft.com website, click My
Office and login with your Microsoft ID.
$200 gets you Office 2013. You own it for the life
of one PC, it is not transferable so when you buy a new PC you buy
Office again. It is tied to the internet, SkyDrive and Office on
Demand. 2013 hooks into your Social Networks as well.
In 2013 when you get an Outlook email from a
Facebook Friend or LinkedIn Contact their picture and all their
recent posts display as well. This is done in a "People"
pane which is very similar to the "Reading" pane you're
probably used to. It even shows their Profile Picture. So many
companies block social networking websites that this has to cause
some issues down the road.
$100 gets you Office 365, for a year, and it's on
you, not your PC. Your subscription allows installation on up to 5
devices for as long as you keep paying, and it's tied to the
internet, SkyDrive and Office on Demand. I'm thinking 5 devices
equals 5 PCs, because I can't think of anyone using a Microsoft
Tablet or Phone.
With Office 365 you could have one installation on
your home PC, one on your office PC, take one with you on your
notebook PC, have one at the flat in Paris and another at the villa
in Cartagena. If you needed anything anywhere else you could access
Office on Demand and SkyDrive from someone else's PC. Using
Office on Demand at www.office.com won't give you
Microsoft Outlook, but you could login to www.outlook.com for that if you
like .
With Office 365 you can work virtually everywhere,
virtually all the time, or not, that's your call, and that's
Cocktail Talk.
