I kind of wonder about the updated versions of Microsoft Office every two or three years. I suspect Microsoft is just coming up with minor updates to justify asking people to buy a new version of the program. Because some of us have been using Word and Excel for literally decades and it seems like the basic functionality is still the same.
Hoohah, I think you got it.
I would have wanted to be in your shoes, but my experience is that when I got a new computer I had to get new programs. I used to snag them off filesharing sites but I’m too tired for that right now. I would have been happy with a 1999 version for the last 22 years.
To me it’s even more insidious and maybe paranoid. I think they make products that are more confusing and have more idiosyncrasies because it’s better for them as the vendor of a monopoly product.
I think Microsoft gets a lot of leeway due to inertia. So many people are used to their products and there is SO much written help for a million fiddly things over the last 30 years that people keep using it.
I can’t think that will sustain them forever though. At some point they really need to do some serious updates to their office suite. Mainly Word.
You can turn off S Mode easily. It’s a one-way trip though, can’t easily go back. Personally, I don’t see why you’d want to use S, unless you are really paranoid about third party programs and are near illiterate at computers.
@drag_dog Libre is decent for most of the Office alternatives, but I haven’t found any Excel alternative better than the OG. Both because it screws with my muscle memory (semi colons instead of commas, why!?) but it’s also got other things that are harder.
While I’ve never tested it, it’s also supposed to work better on lower powered hardware. It’s Microsoft’s answer to Chromebooks, and is trying to be as lean as those. That way schools can buy every student a Windows laptop instead of the Chromebooks they usually buy. If the device comes with Windows 10S, it’s probably a cheaper, but lower powered device, so it can make sense not to want to try the full OS. Heck, it may not even have enough storage to handle it.
The main reason I brought it up is that there was a poster not too long ago who got a new laptop with Windows 10S. They were encouraged to just try it out, and see if they’d be okay with the restrictions. For what they intended to use it for, it seemed it was sufficient.
I don’t use LibreOffice, but in January I started using the very similar OpenOffice from Apache because there are PC and Android versions of it. I don’t think there is a version of LibreOffice that runs on Android devices. I have the PC version of OpenOffice on my desktop and the Android version on my tablet. I can open, use, and edit the same Word and Excel files on both devices, or use OpenOffice’s native file types. It seems to work pretty well so far.
I find that this thread confuses several issues. Here is my experience:
I bought a subscription to Microsoft 365 (which is how they have rebranded what used to be called Office 365). For $99 per year (offered to the public) it authorizes 5 users to use the downloaded client software. Each of those 5 users can use it on 5 different devices (Windows machines, Android tablets, iOS, MacOS, and probably Chrome OS). For up to 25 copies that is a hell of a deal seeing as though you get constant feature updates as they are released. This beats what I used to have which was one immutable copy for a couple hundred bucks.
Only the Windows and Mac versions run VBA macros. That is critical to me.
The browser-based version of 365 does not run VBA macros. Microsoft has introduced a new scripting language, but it’s online only. Why they thought it was a good idea to break compatibility between online and desktop clients I have no idea.
I have no experience with Libre Office and limited experience with Google Sheets and Google Docs.