Is Microsoft ending the 3 PC version of Office Home and Student?

[techs]

I went looking for a copy and its out of stock at a bunch of places and 179.00 at a few that have it.

Is it being discontinued or has the price just gone way up?

I wonder if this is to "encourage" people to buy Office 365?

 

[taisingera]

Apparently they aren't doing a 3PC version on Office 2013 (as it says for a single PC, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/#SeeTopFeatures). Newegg lists 2010 version as discontinued.

 

[Mushkins]

Literally the day after 2013 was available it became nearly impossible to find 2010, and wherever you could it was about three times the price.

The retail 2013 is a single-PC license that is transferable. The "family pack" has been moved to an Office 365 plan, I think its install on up to 4 PCs.

 

[A5]

Yeah, the new multi-license version is Office 365. The "University" edition comes with 2 installs, not sure about the others.

 

[taisingera]

Office 365 is not good if you are someone who likes to keep software they purchased for a long time.

 

[gmaster456]

I hate this subscription (rental) based model they have now.

 

[Mushkins]

To be honest, the 365 subscription model is great for home users. You get the whole Professional suite for *five* PCs and a 20GB Skydrive account for only $99 a year, including support calls if you really need them. A single retail copy of Professional was $350-400 previously. There's absolutely no reason to hang on to old versions at home, there just isn't.

Where it really sucks is businesses. They know none of our software works with the latest version of Office, and it probably wont be officially supported for this version until the *next* version is out. But you only get the latest version, period, and they don't sell the old versions a la carte anymore. Your business still uses 2007 or 2010, and needs to? You're stuck buying enterprise licensing at a considerable markup even if you're only a small business, or you can hope to buy retail keys from third party resellers.

Hell, even Dell partners can't get new PCs with Office 2010 on them anymore unless its a seriously big account, and you have to fight with customer service to get the order placed.

 

[FLegman]

I hate this subscription (rental) based model they have now.

"Cloudy" business model indeed, for some end users.

 

[Nothinman]

To be honest, the 365 subscription model is great for home users. You get the whole Professional suite for *five* PCs and a 20GB Skydrive account for only $99 a year, including support calls if you really need them. A single retail copy of Professional was $350-400 previously. There's absolutely no reason to hang on to old versions at home, there just isn't.

Where it really sucks is businesses. They know none of our software works with the latest version of Office, and it probably wont be officially supported for this version until the *next* version is out. But you only get the latest version, period, and they don't sell the old versions a la carte anymore. Your business still uses 2007 or 2010, and needs to? You're stuck buying enterprise licensing at a considerable markup even if you're only a small business, or you can hope to buy retail keys from third party resellers.

Hell, even Dell partners can't get new PCs with Office 2010 on them anymore unless its a seriously big account, and you have to fight with customer service to get the order placed.

If you're a business you should have an open license agreement which comes with downgrade rights. You only need 5 licenses of anything MS sells to start an open license agreement so there's really no excuse for a business in that respect.

 

[alangrift]

I think they will eventually drop the Office 2013 and make everything online-only. Means more money for them in the long run, people always forget to cancel subscriptions.

 

[Doomer]

Yep, put a ring in peoples noses and they follow wherever you lead them.

 

[Mushkins]

If you're a business you should have an open license agreement which comes with downgrade rights. You only need 5 licenses of anything MS sells to start an open license agreement so there's really no excuse for a business in that respect.

Except those open license agreements are considerably more expensive than retail, OEM, and copies bundled with hardware purchases.

When you only *have* five employees, it does not make cost sense to be upsold to higher license agreements.

 

[Nothinman]

Except those open license agreements are considerably more expensive than retail, OEM, and copies bundled with hardware purchases.

When you only *have* five employees, it does not make cost sense to be upsold to higher license agreements.

If you need the downgrade rights or other benefits of them, then yes they are worth it to you.

 

[Mushkins]

If you need the downgrade rights or other benefits of them, then yes they are worth it to you.

I wish thats how business works, but its not There isn't unlimited money to just throw at IT expenses for the most technically sound solution especially in small business, which is precisely the scenario we're talking about where the push to 365 subscriptions and the sudden pulling of all availability of previous versions hurts the most. The enterprise environment can say "volume/open licensing is worth the added cost due to the benefits that save us money in other ways" much more easily than Jane's Flowers being told they need to spend a few thousand extra dollars on MS office licenses "just because." Jane's Flowers is not hiring another six people over the course of the next year, and they're better off spending that extra $100 on a marked up copy of Office 2010 for their one new hire as needed until their business apps become compatible with 2013.

The point is there is no "one size fits all" licensing solution for all shapes and sizes of business, and the subscription model for 365 as it stands now sucks for a *lot* of situations. Hell, if they added downgrade rights to 365 i'd be moving my users to it in a heartbeat, it would save us a crazy amount of money, but our software just *doesnt work* with 2013 yet, we need to be on 2007/2010.

 

[Nothinman]

I wish thats how business works, but its not There isn't unlimited money to just throw at IT expenses for the most technically sound solution especially in small business, which is precisely the scenario we're talking about where the push to 365 subscriptions and the sudden pulling of all availability of previous versions hurts the most. The enterprise environment can say "volume/open licensing is worth the added cost due to the benefits that save us money in other ways" much more easily than Jane's Flowers being told they need to spend a few thousand extra dollars on MS office licenses "just because." Jane's Flowers is not hiring another six people over the course of the next year, and they're better off spending that extra $100 on a marked up copy of Office 2010 for their one new hire as needed until their business apps become compatible with 2013.

The point is there is no "one size fits all" licensing solution for all shapes and sizes of business, and the subscription model for 365 as it stands now sucks for a *lot* of situations. Hell, if they added downgrade rights to 365 i'd be moving my users to it in a heartbeat, it would save us a crazy amount of money, but our software just *doesnt work* with 2013 yet, we need to be on 2007/2010.

If you're too cheap to spend <$400 on a copy of Office Std to start an Open License agreement I'm not sure how long your business will be open anyway. We just had a client with ~5 employees go through this. They still have Exchange 2003 so Office 2013 isn't an option and the only way to get downgrade rights is with an Open License agreement. It took a few days after we sent the quote but she signed it because she couldn't find another, cheaper way to do what she needed.

We're not talking about unlimited money, but one does need to budget properly for IT expenses which seems to be a problem for most small businesses.