And do you like it? What are the advantages/disadvantages over Office Home Edition? Is the software actually installed on the laptop and can you save documents locally or must they exist in the cloud exclusively?
Normally, I wouldn’t consider this, but they are offering Office 365 for $79.99 for 4 years*.
Any help would be appreciated!**
Office 365 University - Student/education special - my wife is staff at a state-accredited preschool and as near as I can tell she does qualify.
** Please don’t tell me to try OpenOffice or any other open source solution. It’s to do work (both professional and with volunteer organizations) and OpenOffice has been tried and doesn’t seem to fit the bill.
Office 365 gives you the right to download and install Office 2013 on the computer used by the Office 365 subscriber. You can also edit in your browser from any computer if the document is saved to your SkyDrive account.
As far as I know, Office 365 is just a different type of licence for Office - it allows you to install and use the same Office suite. And I believe it always gives you access to the latest version. But of course the software will stop working once the subscription expires.
I use Office 365 both at home and work. It’s installed on the local hard drive and it can access local files just fine. It also allows you to access your Microsoft Cloud storage, but you don’t have to use it. I believe it only has a limited help system when offline though, the full help system is online only.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft, but not for Office. I own 365. I’m not speaking for Microsoft.
Basically, it’s a license option: You can install Office 2013 (or Mac Office 2011, in any combination) on up to five computers at a time. You can “unauthorized” a computer to get it’s license back, either on that computer or remotely. The copies of Office are exactly the same as ones acquired any other way. It phones home occasionally (once a month, I think) to insure that it’s still licensed and that the particular computer is still authorized. I don’t know what happens if that connection fails (e.g. you’re on a plane when it phones), but I suspect it doesn’t just shut down completely – most MS products give you a few days grace period.
Files can be stored locally or in the cloud or both. The usual Skydrive permissions apply, so cloud documents can be public, private, or available to a list of people you choose. You can edit documents using a (very lightweight) web version of Office (this is actually a SkyDrive feature, not an Office 365 one) if you don’t want to do an install on a given computer.
The 2013 version (but not the Mac 2011 version) can do an “incremental” install to get you started quickly on a new computer – it downloads the core of the app, then lets it run. If you use a feature that’s not downloaded yet, it’ll grab it then. This is neat when you’re at a low-tech relative’s house, for example, and just want to make some edits.
To sweeten the deal, Microsoft gives you some Skydrive space as part of the package (in addition to any you may have already), and there are frequently special offers attached (usually Skype minutes) that may or may not interest you.
That price seems very good – almost too good. It’s much better than the price that we get as employees, for example.