Folks,

Has anyone used these cheap websites that sell MS software? I’m after MS Office 2013 / 2016 (not 365) and really dont fancy paying the retailer prices!

I usually use softwaregeeks.co.uk and they fine, but sadly they are out of stock.

Cheers folks.

BTW open office et al are not particularly suitable for this requirement.

Does your employer of a home use program ?

Mine does and I can get a copy for £10

The cheap stuff are generally going to be dubiously legit.

What’s your budget?

Home and Student is one of the cheapest options. Strictly not for business use, and one install only. Can be had for around £80.

I wouldn’t knock the 365 option. Price is about the same as Home and Student, but you get 5 installs, you get Publisher, Access and Outlook also unlike Home and Student, can install on Mac, iOS, Android, plus you get 1TB of OneDrive.

Downside is you have to pay up each year. Though monthly fee does spread the cost, and £8 a month is just a few cups of coffee. It’s a little cheaper on annual fee. Personally the fee alone is worth it for 1TB of online storage.

Oh, and yeah as above, check with employer as they might have a home use offer.

No employer folks……self employed!

We looked at some of the dodgy resellers with websites like buyofficereallycheaphonest.com but apart from the obvious alarm bells the reviews were very suspect. Decided just to go to one of the big boys, Amazon I think. With two users the numbers are a bit easier (although I am happy on open office but the wife can’t use that for work)

OEM etc. licences acquired that way are against the EULA – if you want an Office 201x licence then maybe pay for it like you’re supposed to? And yeah software development is part of what my company does.

FuzzyWuzzy, does anyone actually pay full price (if at all!) for software?? 😉

For the record, i’m in the same game!

http://www.rackspace.co.uk/office-365

Edit: oops sorry missed the bit about not 365

Self employed, now okay this isn’t seemingly cheap at first, but it’s a cracking deal really… Microsoft Action Pack. £300 though, but it’s aimed at very small businesses to run their company and gets you all the operating systems, server stuff, Office 365 for business including Exchange, SQL and if you’re a developer a cut down MSDN subscription. Many £thousands value for a fraction of the price.

But if you just want bargain basement Office, it’s Home & Student or Office 365. The latter is way more value.

software4students – if you have a handy student/ schoolchild

It’s just not that easy anymore – since office 2013 you can’t just resell an unused Office LIC, because they don’t exist anymore – they’re single use licenses that are assigned to a user.

I’ll say/type what I always tell people – do whatever Microsoft wants you to do, or at some point in the future they will make you suffer – no one really knows how, but at some point in the next year or two you’ll suffer – it’s the Microsoft way.

If its for your business, buy 365 Business – it’s £84+VAT a year or £8.50+VAT a month. You can install it on 5 of your own devices and it’ll let you do clever things in ‘the cloud’ with it.

If it’s not for your business, buy 365 Home if you want to install it on up to 5 machines at home for £8 a month (inc VAT) if you’ve just got the one PC/Mac buy 365 personal for £6 a month.