Office 2013 a.k.a Office 365 question

[PLAfiller]

Hi guys, I hope you are doing fine this weekend. I was looking into the upcoming Office 2013 suite and I have a simple question I couldn't find the answer for. Currently a preview of Office 2013 is running in the form of Office 365. Looking at the retail prices for the final versions and the differences between the packages I came to the conclusion that a stand alone edition is quite expensive and limited. Say I need one license for me, one for my parents, one for my girlfriend, anyway. So a free version of Office 365 is available now. As far as I get it, if I sign up for Office 365 Home Premium I get to install it to 5 PCs and it will be active until 60 days after the release date- that's in May, so around June-July I should be able to use the applications. What I am asking is do I need to be constantly on-line in order to use Word? Is office 365 only on the cloud service of Microsoft>? or I could be offline writing my university project? Because it says it saves the documents by default to the cloud>? Does that mean that in order to create a document my mom has to be on-line as well>?

 

[Kreij]

Office 2013 and Office 365 are not the same thing.
Office 2013 is the traditional local install (stand alone).
Office 365 is a cloud service that allows access to the Office 2013 application in the form of web apps. If you only have Office 365 it appears that you would need a constant internet connection as it uses "click-to-run" (application streaming) technology.
The information is a little sketchy, but it looks like you can have it on 5 devices (with the ability to switch devices if needed) and up to 5 users who can access it on any of the 5 devices.
Each user needs a MS account, so yes, your mom would have to have internet access to use it on her device (which would be one of the 5 total devices).

I think you may be able to store the files locally, but you would still need the internet to have access to the application.

My recommendation would be to try the preview so you know for sure what it will do for you. It can always be deleted if it does not work well for you. Remember also, that if you use it and do not eventually buy a subscription ($100/year) your cloud data will be deleted and will be unrecoverable.

$100 a year for 5 devices and 5 users and never having to worry about updating the application (it's in the cloud) is a very good deal in my opinion. I've used some of the Office 2010 web apps (with SkyDrive) and they worked very well for me.

 

[PLAfiller]

Thanks. I kinda see where MS want to go, but I don't like it. They want to steer users towards their cloud service and especially small and medium entrepreneurial firms starting their business towards MS's cloud service battling with the free and paid options of Google drive/Docs and etc. services. Since Office 365 offers a handy tool for making a web-sites like google Sites (it was previously named OfficeLive, but it is discontinued now).

Well, the student edition is $140 for a single license. Even if I manage to take the student discount as a full-time employed one, it will be around $80-$90, but still only for my PC. I currently use LibreOffice, but the compatibility is limited on certain level (saving in .docx is a dead end most of the time). I was a little unwilling to install it, but I guess I will give it a go and see what happens. I just don't like having two programs doing the same task for me, in this case word processing.

 

[Kreij]

There are advantages to using a cloud service in that you do not have to worry about updates or backups.
The disadvantage is that if the cloud goes down your screwed. (see sig.)

 

[newtekie1]

Microsoft Office 2010 Home & Student 3-User

Just but the Office 2010 3-pack and be done with it. I've been using the Office 2013 beta for several months now and there is absolutely nothing it offers over 2010 that the common user would want.

Also, there will probably be a 3-pack released for 2013 if you want to wait.