Microsoft was actively discussing the idea of selling its office suite along with computers, as is the case with Windows today. Thus, the company would instantly increase sales, because manufacturers would have to invest the cost of Office in the price of the final product. But either Microsoft partners did not want to take on the extra costs, or the corresponding study showed that not everyone is ready to overpay for an office suite. But this idea remained on paper. Nevertheless, as is often the case, it passed from one form to another.
The main problem Microsoft saw for increasing Office sales was the high barrier to entry. To buy even a minimal office suite, a user had to pay at least $ 100. If you break this amount, for example, into three years of use, you will get quite acceptable money. But paying them immediately, even purely psychologically, was difficult for a large number of buyers, who eventually found a way out of the situation on pirate resources. Microsoft didn’t want to cut the price, but they didn’t want to lose customers either.
Topic Covered
What is Office 365?
As part of Office 365 for home users, Microsoft offers a combination of web service and desktop applications. Thus, for a monthly fee of 64 UAH per month or 640 UAH per year, the user gets the opportunity to download and install Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access and Publisher on 5 computers, plus 20 GB of space in the SkyDrive cloud storage. Additionally, in the browser, you can edit documents in Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint through the web applications. Also, as part of the subscription, the user receives 60 minutes of Skype calls to landline phones in 40 countries, while, funny as it may seem, you cannot call Ukraine.
The five licenses that are available under Office 365 are also distributed for computers on Mac OS X, but in fact, the user has access to the Office 2011 for Mac office suite with Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. As a result, for 64 UAH per month, you can get a full set of Microsoft Office 2013 applications, plus additional space for storing data in SkyDrive. But it’s worth noting that all five licenses a user obtains are tied to a Microsoft account. You can’t just donate or sell your license to someone, and it’s not just the notorious rules for using the software, this person can get access to the user’s account, including SkyDrive.
Unlike the Office 2013 suite, which had problems transferring licenses, Office 365 is very flexible in this process. At the same time, he can independently manage licenses by adding or removing them from certain PCs. All this is done through the office.com website. In total, the user has five licenses that he can use on computers running Windows and OS X.
Integration with SkyDrive
The documents that the user works with can be automatically saved not only in the PC memory, but also on SkyDrive server’s right at the moment of typing, creating a spreadsheet or presenting. Thus, for example, you can type text on one computer, and then open it on another, while the cursor will be in the same place where the user left it. This is undoubtedly a very convenient function that allows, firstly, to access documents from any PC, and secondly, not to lose them in the event of a breakdown or loss of the computer.
Work on Windows
The final versions of the programs included in Office 365 are not much different from what the company offered in a preliminary test build. Most of their functions can be found in the review already published on our website. The changes in the commercial release were few and far between. For example, more themes have appeared, which does not affect the work in any way.
The programs included with Office 365 are designed to be installed on Windows 7 and 8; earlier versions of Microsoft systems are not supported. As I wrote above, with a subscription, the user gets a full set of applications from the Office 2013 suite. In addition to the popular Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, they also include OneNote, Access and Publisher.
After installing the apps and launching it, the first thing that catches your eye is a simplified interface that now more closely matches the look and feel of Windows 8, formerly known as Metro. The new lightweight design is also supported by the increased speed of Office programs. They open almost instantly, and the operation of the interface itself does not cause any complaints, it also significantly increased its speed. When you open programs for the first time, with the exception of Outlook and OneNote, they show the Start screen with document templates in the center and the most recently opened files in the left column, including those on SkyDrive.