Do you?

Works out cheaper at first, but they soon add up. But you do get the latest version.

Currently on Adobe Photographer plan and two MS Office free trials. It’s an interesting model but they do end up with their claws in you and over the years you could end up handing over many hundreds of quids.

Depends how you view it – I seem to have ended up with a new version of MS Office every 4 years or so for as long as I remember – if you add up the retail price of each version for business use then renting might actually have been cheaper?

Full Adobe Creative Cloud suite – bargain IMO.

MS Office makes sense as it’s online storage with free office suite included.

The 1Tb of space for 5 accounts was pretty much the cheapest storage when I subscribed a couple of years ago, the software was just an added extra.

That’s about the only one.

Add in the 1 TB of cloud storage, free upgrades and 5 installs of office you can give to friends and family and the MS Office one works out really good value, imho. I pay 99€/year I think. I think they basically do it because until recently no home users paid them anything (directly), they either got what they needed OEM when they bought the PC and stayed on that version forever, pirated it or didn’t use it. At least this way they get some regular revenue.

EDIT : Too late, but still true 🙂

if you add up the retail price of each version for business use then renting might actually have been cheaper?

For Adobe – yes, if you really want full Photoshop. I was previously using Elements, which was good, but they kept releasing new features quite quickly that I thought addressed the deficiencies, so I ended up buying 8 then 11.

For Office though – not sure. Office personal was only about £80 for three users anyway to buy outright. But then as said you get a crapload of online storage too which is quite useful.

Also as orangespyderman points out it’s five PCs rather than three, so I could give two to my parents and/or my sister. Or my kids when they get old enough.

Gets my goat!
SAGE, we don’t need the latest version.
We would like to do Payroll but that means an additional sub.
If you want to do pensions contributions, thats another sub.
Works out crazy expensive compared to buying outright but that is no longer an option AFAIK.

I would much rather buy the software and use it until the OS is updated and then buy again.
We do the same with vehicles, don’t like renting anything.

We do the same with vehicles, don’t like renting anything.

It’s a lot of capital to have tied up?

Pfffft. Last software i bought ($100) offered 5 years of support and updates included.

2 months later they discontinued it.

2 months after that it stopped working due to various codec and OS changes.

Then the “free” CD copy of the software arrived, that i couldn’t even remember ordering.

I had to subscribe to get some new software, that’s not as good. Think it’s going to cost me about $80 over the same 5 year period. But it still works. 5 years later.

What was it?

Pretty good deal where i work. Full MSDN subscription so I can download any microsoft product for free + full creative cloud suite as the University pays for it for every staff member

Full Adobe Creative Cloud suite – Would much rather buy the individual apps every couple of years.

I only need 3 application and the cheapest way to buy them is to pay for the whole suite. The applications are updated regularly which I guess is nice but there’s nothing been added in the last couple of years that’s worthwhile to my workflow. The software is full of bugs and the customer support is atrocious.

Full MSDN subscription so I can download any microsoft product for free

Which is pretty sweet, but half of it you can’t use in anger (Production). Great for yourself though – I have also got a HUP license, which is a nice bonus for legal Office.
We have an enterprise agreement, and renting makes significantly more sense in many areas as we are obliged to keep upgrading them to stay in support, and the prices are decently cheaper than buying outright (in our volume) .. plus it becomes an OpEx rather than CapEx and our current accounting regime like this. That pendulum will swing again sooner or later.

It’s been pretty common for years in the enterprise, the idea is you’re not just paying for the software but also for support, patches, upgrades etc.

In the home, I suppose it depends how important the latest and greatest version of something is, or whether you’re perfectly with Office 2003 to write a letter to Auntie Mabel twice a year.

SAGE

consider yourself lucky. I’ve just had to buy 25 copies of quick books because I can no longer buy licences for the 2013 product and the 2016 version ‘upgrades’ the file so it won’t work in the old version. All just for two new users

For work I like it now as the cost is similar but I can always have everyone on the same version which makes life easier. For home it depends on the package. Ms office is a winner but most others I still buy standalone

I should say I’m a ‘365 expert’ and reseller so I’m far from unbiased.

365 for Businesses is good, clients love it once they understand it. And at least Microsoft have made the lease platform worthwhile – they also still sell stand-alone office suites. But not everyone wants to pay anything for it.

Lots of them however were reluctant to change – frankly a lot of them bought a single Office 2010 license in the dim and distant past and installed it as many times as they wanted without thinking they were doing anything wrong. Until FAST explained to them the errors of their ways by way of a big fine.

Fast-forward to Office ’13, Office ’13 isn’t sold per machine, it’s sold per user, by the letter of the license agreement (standard off the shelf office, not volume licensing) if/when someone leaves your organisation, the office license belongs to them – they can log into their office account – and just install it on any machine they’re using so you need to buy a new one every time you have new employees. Businesses either assigned dozens of licenses to a single user (which is against their license agreement) or new staff were stuck with previous staff details on office. MS were forced to do this because of the massive wholesale theft of previous versions.

365 offers them the chance to buy exactly what they want, for who they want, whenever they want. It’s usually much cheaper for them to use 365 if 1) they intend to comply with the licensing agreement 2) have even modest staff turnover and on and off board properly.

As for other software, sadly some is good, some it bad but it’s how it is, take it or leave it – games will be going the same way too – they’re dipping their toe in with ‘season passes’ for added content. I personally wouldn’t mind as long as they don’t take the piss too much, I’ve bought games I’ve paid £40 for and played once or twice and never touched again – if I leased that for £5 a month, I’d turn it off after a month, I think I would have spent about £180 on GTAV by now though…

It’s a lot of capital to have tied up?.
We tend to run vehicles (x4) into the ground and not replace them until then.
Still running a 2000 pickup with no issues.
Granted if we were running a massive fleet then it would make sense.
Some of the big fleets rent tyres and vehicle graphics, never understood that..

365 for Businesses is good,

it would be almost perfect if the share point (sites) sync worked rather than being quite as pants as it is 🙁

No idea. It was nearly 5 years ago, the computer has had some “major” updates (New OS disc, new OS and one or two rebuilds) The disc went pretty much straight in the bin. We don’t even use the replacement so much anymore, everything is on Plex, or we use VLC if it’s not.

Office ’13 isn’t sold per machine, it’s sold per user

Does that apply to the home deal too? It says 5 PCs, but does that mean under one account?

Ghostlymachine – I meant what software was it?

No idea. It was nearly 5 years ago.

Or do you mean what type of software?

Bluray playing suite of some description.

That’s what I meant yes 🙂

Does that apply to the home deal too? It says 5 PCs, but does that mean under one account?

Nope, you buy it under one Microsoft Account. The Install Page then has options to send invites to four other accounts. You can revoke the installs as well if you give it to a mate who then knocks your pint over or something.

Each of the 5 accounts gets the 1Tb One Drive, the accounts are separate too so the main account can’t sneakily browse the other’s One Drive unless they have the password.

Ace.

There’s also a cheaper personal edition of 365, still gives you 1TB storage but installs are limited to yourself, but that can be multiple devices, just not more than one desktop install, phone install, etc.

For the storage alone it’s worth it.

I also have Microsoft Action Pack for my freelance business. V.small companies only but gives you all the essential software to run your business including each desktop and server operating system, full enterprise version of Office 365 inc Exchange online & SharePoint, OneDrive for Business (I forget how much storage), plus Project & Visio, SQL database, Dynamics, on premises Exchange, amongst others, plus a slimmed down MSDN licence with latest Visual Studio. 5 seats of each in many cases. And Azure on top with a small monthly credit.

All for £330 a year.

Catch though is it’s internal use only and tied to a single location. Basically stuff for running your business, demos, training, but not direct revenue generation.

Use free software? The subscription costs are highly competitive. 😉

Apart from a significant use of free open source bits and pieces, the services I pay for are:

Platform.sh for hosting
GitHub for private got repos
Browserstack so I can use strange web browsers
Bugherd.com for bug reporting

And a couple of actual local pieces of commercial software that are significantly better than open source equivalents:

Pixelmator
Sketch
Phpstorm (though I do wonder…)

Rachel

And a couple of actual local pieces of commercial software that are significantly better than open source equivalents:

Office 😉

Yes, office.

I will never trust these new-fangled cloud wotsits. Free software for me. Being a simple folk I don’t need to access my data… But I could with free software, if I wanted, and my internet was fast enough. I tried using OpenVPN running on a PI to get access to my Debian NAS but couldn’t even stream an MP3, was getting on for dialup speeds.

Our problem is crap broadband, so a home NAS would be difficult.

Office 😉

I’ve not really got much use for Office, tbh. You have just reminded me that, because of a tablet I bought, I have a free Office 365 subscription but don’t have it installed as I don’t really use it – the disk space is more useful to me!

Rachel

Other thing to consider – when I bought Office 2007 for personal use it only had Word, Excel, One Note and PowerPoint I think. The Office 365 sub includes Publisher, which my wife loves and finds really useful. Also Access, which she doesn’t know what’s for and probably nor does anyone else these days…

Scribus is better than MS Publisher, and its free.

Also Access, which she doesn’t know what’s for and probably nor does anyone else these days…

access for people who don’t know what databases are…

Interestingly we started offering lease a few years back as it fits with the purchase cycle for the kionid of software and more importantly got under some spend limits it seemed 🙂

Yes Adobe Creative Cloud and Office 365.

No brainer for us, much better delivery and updates. Don’t think it’s any more expensive…

For the prices we charge to do the work we do, the cost is marginal. Everyone was up in arms about the Adobe suite but seriously graphics/video professionals moaning about 40 a month?

Also Access, which she doesn’t know what’s for and probably nor does anyone else these days…

We use it.

Legacy stuff only, thankfully.

I also have Microsoft Action Pack…

All for £330 a year.

Catch though is it’s internal use only and tied to a single location. Basically stuff for running your business, demos, training, but not direct revenue generation.

The biggest catch that each of the licences is a single install only.

HD goes and you reinstall? One licence gone.

Change PC? One licence gone

etc etc

And it’s not per year, it’s for the life of the subscription.

We’ve had our subscription for 10 years, no more windows licences left, no more Office. We’re junking it and moving to 365, we’ve only been keeping it going because it had SQL Server included but our new hosts provide that now so we’re giving up on it…

To be fair to them they do warn not to use them on virtual machines you setup for one time use on demos etc but it’s still a right pain that they penalise you for being a long time user.

Everyone was up in arms about the Adobe suite but seriously graphics/video professionals moaning about 40 a month?

^This – if you can’t clear £40 a month perhaps you need another trade.

Creative Suite is way, way better than the olden days when all printers in one area used the same copy of Quark Xpress! This copy was handed out by the local imagesetting bureau so everyone would come to them for their film output!

The bureau was a great source for fonts too.

<RMS> Your files and data are held hostage if you don’t keep paying the subscription </RMS>

Your files and data are held hostage if you dont keep paying the subscription

There’s nothign stopping you using local storage for any of the MS365 software. It’s what I do, then mirror to a local NAS and off to Dropbox (but you can do the same and use the MS storage as a backup service, not the only copy).

But, tbh, if you’re using proprietary software you’re already pretty much being ‘held hostage’ to that file format etc.