In recent years Microsoft has been heavily marketing Office 365 which is an online version of its software including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. By default it stores documents on its OneDrive cloud.
Its software has never been cheap, but now Microsoft has found an additional source of revenue, charging an annual subscription for Office 365 instead of a one-off fee. To lure unsuspecting customers in, they will provide it free for 12 months, usually already installed on new laptops or computers as standard from the manufacturer. At the time of writing this costs £60pa for a single user or £80pa for a ‘family’ (up to 6 people)
There are more cost-effective (including free) options for most users:
- LibreOffice – a free alternative to Office with a modern interface and the ability to open and create all Microsoft document types
- Apache OpenOffice – another free option with more traditional menu style. It can open all Microsoft documents, but at the time of writing it cannot create the newer .docx or .xlsx file types. This should not be a problem for most users
- Google Docs – this is a another free alternative, integrated with Google Drive online storage. Documents are viewed and editted in a browser such as Chrome and it can open Microsoft documents. However, the features don’t quite match Office and the display can be slightly different in irritating ways. Google Docs does have the convenience of being immediately available by just going online to docs.google.com
- Finally, if you are incorrigibly wedded to Microsoft products it is possible to buy the standalone (not online) Office suite for a much better price than widely advertised. Contact the Digital Life for prices as low as £25 for Office 2019 Pro Plus