Paul Thurrott nails the Office 365 subscription numbers

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His article on Thurrott.com is behind a paywall, but as I’ve said several times before, the $64/year is well worth it. Bottom line: The Office 365 sit
[See the full post at: Paul Thurrott nails the Office 365 subscription numbers]

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Many universities are now only giving students discounted or free Office 365, whereas years ago it was a discount on whatever was the newest version of office. Microsoft is heavily pushing Office 365 because it, like Windows 10, is more of an app/spybot instead of a program.

Fortran, C++, R, Python, Java, Matlab, HTML, CSS, etc.... coding is fun!
A weatherman that can code

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I posted the Keyser link in another thread and commented that this is not very promising for Windows as a service. This can turn MS more desperate than it actually has already demonstrated, which means that you ain’t seen nothing yet on their forcing win10 down users’ throat.

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It’s been fun Woody… but now it’s time to say goodbye… I prefer to keep my email address anonymous nor do I want my posts to be tracked by you or whomever will eventually hack your site. I’m curious what benefit will you realize by requiring log-in?

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See reply on first posting

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anonymous wrote:

I prefer to keep my email address anonymous nor do I want my posts to be tracked by you or whomever will eventually hack your site.

‘Bye… but posting Anonymously in the Lounge is no different than posting anonymously in the old AskWoody blog. Same exact mechanism.

anonymous wrote:

I’m curious what benefit will you realize by requiring log-in?

Logins are not required, as you’ve demonstrated here. The main immediate benefit to me is that I no longer have to moderate 100+ comments a day, and I’ll finally be able to find stuff with the Search function. In the future, the main benefits will include a repository for stuff that should hang around (the AskWoody Knowledge Base), and questions accepted directly by posters.

All of that will be free to everyone, and anonymous posting will stay the same as it always has been. The big difference to you folks is that, if you register, you don’t have to wait for me to moderate your posts – and at some point in the future you’ll be able to start your own Topic in the support Forums.

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But Woody, before you could put your name and oddly, a website, now you can only put a website, so your posts always are from “Anonymous”. Is there something that I don’t understand?

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Anonymous

Is there something that I don’t understand?

Maybe you truly are anonymous!

Unless you want to Identify yourself ……

NightOwl posting anonymously

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anonymous wrote:

before you could put your name and oddly, a website, now you can only put a website, so your posts always are from “Anonymous”.

People posting anonymously often felt they HAD to put a name in the name box. It was never necessary. Now it isn’t even possible. If you want to sign an Anonymous post, feel free to do so – but it’s not necessary, and not even hinted at being a requirement.

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It will be very interesting to see statistics on new computer sales following the October end to Win7. In my circles, among the many people I am in contact with, I do not know of a single one who has bought a PC since October.

The 365 stats are not illustrative of what is actually happening in the consumer field. I do not know of a single person who uses 365. Most of them have it on their computers because it came that way. They may have registered it when it was new, but have never used it or if they have, have certainly not paid for any service.

CT

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Canadian Tech wrote:

The 365 stats are not illustrative of what is actually happening in the consumer field. I do not know of a single person who uses 365. Most of them have it on their computers because it came that way. They may have registered it when it was new, but have never used it or if they have, have certainly not paid for any service.

And that’s the core problem with the Monthly Active Users metric. It measures users whether they’ve paid or not.

JNP wrote:

People need the “programs/functions” contained within Office 365. Do we know where they are going for these services?

The free-for-personal-use Office Online is an excellent alternative.

ch100 wrote:

What email client do the people you know use predominantly if not Outlook

Gmail and Outlook.com. There’s no reason to struggle with Outlook on a PC or Mac any more.

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Woody. That explains a lot of it.

“And that’s the core problem with the Monthly Active Users metric. It measures users whether they’ve paid or not.”

Outlook and WLM have one very attractive feature, you do not have to have ads in your face to read and compile email. Of course, that is why Google, Microsoft and Yahoo do not like WLM.

CT

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@Can. Tech, or anybody else for that matter. People need the “programs/functions” contained within Office 365. Do we know where they are going for these services? Corel? Out of the box regular Office? Open Office?

Also, interesting anecdotal observation about PC sales. Might be something broader to get stats on once things settle-down for our beloved leader.

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All of them are using versions dating all the way back to 2000. For 99% of consumers, Word is 95% likely the only Office part they use. For 99%, there is nothing in the later versions after 2000 that provides any functionality they need.

In addition, with the advent of smart phones and pads, Word is used much less frequently than before the appearance of those new tools.

It used to be (5 years ago) that a user would be very concerned if they did not have Office. That is far from the case today.

CT

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Canadian Tech wrote:

Word is 95% likely the only Office part they use

I would say that according to my observations, Outlook is by far the most used Office application. Word is a distant second.
What email client do the people you know use predominantly if not Outlook?

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Out of 150 client computers, maybe 5 use Outlook. About half use webmail and the other half use Windows Live Mail 2011 or 2012.

In fact, Outlook to the consumer is a very expensive product. About $150 Vs. WLM which is free. The last consumer priced Microsoft Office version that included Outlook was the 2003 version.

WLM is the best Windows client ever produced considering the cost. In fact, it is the same product as Outlook Express from Windows 98 and XP days. WLM is an improved version of Outlook Express. As well Vista came with Windows Mail which was an improved Outlook Express and Windows Live Essentials which includes WLM is yet better version of Outlook Express.

WLM is a pretty good Outlook, but is considerably easier product to use and maintain. WLM includes virtually all the features of Outlook.

Technically it is superior to Outlook because each mail item is a separate file. That makes reliability and maintenance far easier.

CT

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@ Canadian Tech:

+100!!

Here I thought I was the only person who thought Windows Live Mail was a pretty good email client for ‘normal’ people (ie: regular users and non-corporation small offices).

I have archived the full installation files for Windows Live Essentials, as the older versions have been pulled off the MS download areas.

I just install the Mail, Photo Gallery and the Movie Maker apps, skip the rest.

Question: have you figured out how to back up or move the mail and contacts from one system to another (like to a new system)?

Or importing from (LOL), Outlook Express on XP?

PS: working with Outlook (any version) makes me crazy.

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Most of the people I know who use Outlook from the Office Suite deliberately bought the MS Office version with Outlook (used to be Home and Business and higher) mainly because they had Outlook at work.

I have been using both Outlook (from Office 2010) and Thunderbird. I use Thunderbird now because Outlook is increasingly and constantly not allowing remote content images, making it near useless for emails from sites from which I have requested info. I cannot find how to change the setting, so I just open up Thunderbird and view the emails with images Outlook will not show.

I greatly prefer Outlook for migration and backup purposes, and its interface the same as we used at work. The .PST file if very easy to backup and export to a newer version of Outlook. The primary advantage of Thunderbird for me is you can easily migrate your data, accounts, and archives from a Windows machine to a Linux machine since most include Thunderbird in the distros.

Migrating the address book (contacts) from Outlook to Thunderbird is possible, but usually needs careful thought in formatting and exporting the data fields, and it then invariably needs some minor cleanup.

I did use Outlook Express (under XP) and Windows Live Mail (under early Win7), but found migration difficult to Outlook and MS was not interested in making it easier.

I have been using LibreOffice on both Windows and Linux, and have found I could probably abandon MS Office since for the work I do LibreOffice is fine, plus it includes a database. I ALWAYS check any LibreOffice document in MS Office to see if there are format issues and lately there at very, very few.

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Open Office, Libre Office, and a bunch of other Office clones.
And how many are using G-Mail and Google Docs. A bunch of people I know find those two FREE things work well together.
Consumers are hanging on to their install-on-my-PC-don’t-spy-on-me Office that they BOUGHT to own as well (2000, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011 for Mac)

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In fact, every one of my clients “are hanging on to their install-on-my-PC-don’t-spy-on-me Office that they BOUGHT to own as well (2000, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010”

CT

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I’ve been using word 2000 ever since. It is superior to any new version bcoz its lean and I dont even use half of its features. Its simple to use and already does more than I need.

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I’m personally using MS Office 2000 with the File Format Converter to open *.docx and *.xlsx files when I have to. For viewing Power Point slide shows, I use the Power Point viewer, don’t even have Power Point installed.

Have never felt the need to get a newer version of MS Office, and don’t even get me started on the versions with the “Ribbon” interface. That takes 3x as long to find stuff as in the ‘old’ versions. I read somewhere that the newer versions (2010 and later?) have a way to turn on the old menus, so I guess MS got the message that the Ribbon interface was a pain.

Office 2000 runs fine in Windows 7. I haven’t tried it in Win10, but a couple of customers of mine are running Office 2003 in Win10, so that works…until MS decides to break it. Guess they can do that to their own software, nothing to stop them.

One of the things I do for clients who bought a newer PC (Dell, HP, etc.) is to uninstall/delete any Office 365 garbage before I install their older versions.

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Skip H, I do the same thing. I don’t even ask. I just remove 365.

CT

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Microsoft Office? Well, I do have a copy of Office 2003 (Traditional Chinese) installed on a Windows XP virtual machine to use if necessary, but it almost never gets used. And don’t get me started on any kind of Office subscriptions and the “Ribbon”.

Personally I either use OpenOffice (English/Traditional Chinese) on Windows 7 or the old WordPerfect 2000/2002 (English) in a Windows XP virtual machine when I need to do some word processing. I don’t see a need for Microsoft Office anymore.

New Office 365 subscriptions for consumers plunged? Great news!

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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If any (very) old software can still serve my own purposes, I will not get any “recent” or “newer” version even if they are free, let alone pay.

I still use Dreamweaver MX (released about 15 years ago) and WordPerfect 2000/2002 (released about 15-17 years ago) in Windows XP virtual machines as they still serve my purposes. Newer versions don’t contain any features or benefits I consider worth “upgrading”, so I just ignore or dismiss them. In fact in most cases newer versions only contain more hassles for the legitimate users, such as “activation”.

I would have still used Windows XP if it contained the necessary hardware support. I still consider it the best Windows version. The reason I moved to Windows 7 is because of new hardware support that I need (hard disks with greater than 2TB capacity / support of more than 4GiB RAM). I didn’t like Windows 7 initially as it does not remember the size and position of folder windows. This irritated me greatly as I was accustomed to viewing different folders in separate windows. I subsequently found a free little utility called “Shell Folder Fix” that fixed this problem for me in Windows 7. Unfortunately the author of the utility disappeared and the utility has not been updated for several years. Fortunately, however, it still works great in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 (1607).

All in all, I believe older versions of software still have their places, especially when they can be made to work in a virtual machine or when they still run on recent OS versions. I see nothing wrong myself with the user above that said he/she still runs Office 2000 in Windows 7. I am sure he/she knows about any “security risks” and that he/she can deal with them even though it is out of support.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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As for Windows 10, it has nothing that I need. Most of its new features are useless for me, and I object to the forced automatic updates (but now I have found a way of disabling the automatic updates using group policy, installing updates selectively and whenever I want, not when Windows 10 wants) and frequent feature upgrades. I will continue to use Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, well past their end of support if necessary. And if I were compelled to use Windows 10 in the future, I will ONLY use the LTSB (Long Term Servicing Branch) version. It is the version that is closest to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 in that it is supported for 10 years with NO feature upgrades. For a person like me who desires a stable system this is exactly what I need.

I will not be compelled to move, however, because of “security”. I will only consider moving if the hardware I want to use will not be supported on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. And I have made sure that this will not happen for at least several years (hopefully) as I have purchased several X99 motherboards (which still supports Windows 7 and Windows 8.1) for use. Two of them are in use (actually I had used three since one of them failed recently, was sent to the distributor for repair and recently returned to use, replacing another one that is now in storage) and I have 2 others as backup replacements.

It is unfortunate that AMD Ryzen will only be supported fully in Windows 10. I would have considered building a new system based on it but for Windows 10. But the recent review by Anandtech appears to show that Intel Kaby Lake can run on Windows 7 so perhaps it may also be true for Ryzen.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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Our last iteration of MS Office was 2010 Pro (publisher etc.) and we only used Word, Excel, Outlook and occasionally Powerpoint.

Due to the ever expanding size and regularity of patches and security fixes, we ditched it in 2013 at our cost but no regrets there.

Moved onto WLM 2012 and WPS Office (AKA Kingsoft office) with firewall rules and we have never looked back. No longer an MS Office Patch sheep..the challenge which I relish, is finding worthy alternatives.

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Our last iteration of MS Office was 2010 Pro (publisher etc.) and we only used Word, Excel, Outlook and occasionally Powerpoint.

Due to the ever expanding size and regularity of patches and security fixes, we ditched it in 2013 at our cost but no regrets there.

Moved onto WLM 2012 and WPS Office (AKA Kingsoft office) with firewall rules and we have never looked back. No longer an MS Office Patch sheep..the challenge which I relish, is finding worthy alternatives.

(auto logged out whilst submitting hence double post, mods please remove anonymous duplicate)

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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That’s good news. Maybe Microsoft will realise, at some point, that people prefer to own stuff they have bought. This online craziness has lead scores of publishers to invent “lifetime” versions of their software, with horrendously inflated prices. When you buy the regular version, you now get only one year of upgrades (if any), and then you’re supposed to pay again for the following year’s updates. Because of course, updates are worth almost the same price as the original software…

I don’t get how anyone can fall for this “lifetime” swindle. Software publishers, for a start, are certainly not eternal.

As for Office, I’m on 2003, with Outlook included. A destktop email client is critical if one has privacy and redundancy concerns. Not having a copy of your mails on your desktop means you can lose them anytime. Leaving them on your provider’s server means the government can access them with a warrant (if that). Erasing them from the server as soon as they are retrieved, while not being a surefire protection against governmental snooping, is certainly a first step.

Word is still irreplaceable, at least on a PC. There is no other word processor around with a proper outliner (and Word’s outliner is not perfect by any means, at least in my 2003 edition). It’s different on the Mac, from what I understand.

Of course, this means I’m stuck with an outdated and ugly user interface (this horrible baby blue and yellow cannot be changed). Desktop Outlook is bloated (and quirky) for a home user. But it does have exceptional integration qualities, with itself (messages, tasks, calendars) and with other Office software.

I hate Word. It has been invented by perverts, intent on mentally torturing their fellow human beings with concepts impossible to grasp. However, it’s a formidable tool for knowledge management. You can throw anything at it, including the kitchen sink, and it will stick. It’s the universal container. Combined with the Plan Mode (the outliner), it can do a great deal (although not always in a very elegant way). Expensive, professional mind-mapping software might be a match (and even do better in that regard), but that’s beyond my reach.

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ch100, WLM includes a full suite of features.
Calendar: limited, but useful. Shows events on the calendar upcoming on the main screen
Contacts: A full database of data of all types, even free-form notes
Email storage: The ability to create extensive filing systems
Email creation: All the features of a good word processor
Search: limited to one folder at a time, but very useful
Multiple addresses: You can set up so that your inbox includes email from multiple addresses from different email providers
Groups: You can set up email groups. This feature was ruined in the 2012 version but still works very well in the 2011 version. I have archived a full 2011 version which I install on my clients’ computers. It is no longer available otherwise.
Frequency: My inboxes from all my email sources is checked and re-filed every 2 minutes.

It is not as extensive as Outlook, but quite good enough for 98% of users.
A technical feature that makes it much more extensible and reliable. individual emails are stored as individual files. Outlook stores them on a database that can lead to all sorts of problems.

CT

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@ Canadian Tech +1
With the added flexibility of being able to use .eml format in other email clients, should you wish to change the type of email client, whereas, .pst from outlook is an absolute pain to convert the majority of email clients.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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I tried Office 365 here at my business for a year and a half.

Around the time that peak in the graph goes down I abandoned it. We now run permanent Office 2010 licenses.

Why?

• Microsoft promised continuous improvement through updates. It never visibly improved.
• It was harder to use than its predecessors. The “new metaphors” of the new flat, finger-operated UI just aren’t as good for “keyboard and mouse operated” systems. As an example, hover your mouse over a scroll bar and try to click through page after page. The scroll bar becomes inactive after a short time!

Sorry Microsoft, but you don’t get to deliver less product with no real advantages and charge by the month for it. You actually have to do some ongoing WORK to make the subscription model pay!

-Noel

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Isn’t there a subscription “service” that lets you download Office 2016 to your PC. Havent seen/heard much about 2016 (nobody I know uses it) but it’s got to be better than 365 (assume you mean click-to-run type).

I think the numbers for 365 are “claimed” up, because a trial is included in the bloatware on most new PCs. I don’t know but one person that uses it.

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Canadian Tech wrote:

All I’m saying is that down here on the street, the stats don’t meet the smell test. From the street, Microsoft has fallen very far from being an interesting company.

I tend to agree. Why? Because I have a number of folks who have Office 365 on their machines from new, who have later installed a traditional MS Office install who have gone back and forth unknowingly. (Think calls of panic about finding a lost file). When I asked what version of Office they had, it turned out they had inadvertently used the 365 or the Office Online.

I have always uninstalled the pre-installed MSOffice on our new family machines and then installed Office 2010 that used to be sold with licenses for 3 machines. It was also transferable when you uninstalled it from an old machine first, but did once require a phone re-activation.

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PKCano wrote:

Isn’t there a subscription “service” that lets you download Office 2016 to your PC. Havent seen/heard much about 2016 (nobody I know uses it) but it’s got to be better than 365 (assume you mean click-to-run type).

Yes, if you pay extra, it includes 5 O365 desktop licenses (which installs 2016).
Licenses are tracked by machine name and can be managed within the O365 portal.
The downloadable copies do not use product keys, and instead, you sign into them with your O365 credentials, which checks for subscription status. Subscriptions are re-checked every 90 days (similar to KMS, albeit twice as frequently). Once you cancel your sub, the apps will work for a maximum of 90 more days before they report that they are unlicensed.
(Note: I was a SME on O365 at CenturyLink for 6 months last year so this was somewhat my day in/day out bread & butter.)

They’ve changed license levels since then, but the same still applies…the cheapest subscriptions are web only, and for a few bucks more a month, you get the downloadable copies.

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We have VL 2007 and MAK 2010 and 2013 at the office that we use (with about a 70/30 split of Standard and Pro/Pro Plus users).

Most of the departments have their own Google Drive accounts, and use Google Docs (primarily Sheets).

I worked for CenturyLink in the Cloud Applications department for roughly 6 months last year, and was quickly asked to be an O365 SME based on my Exchange, AD, and PowerShell/EMS experience. In that regard, I sold and supported O365 from anything to mom and pop, 2 license small biz customers, to mid level biz with 100+ O365 licenses.

Seeing what Google Docs offers for $0, I’ve always thought O365 was a hard sell – or should be.
Unless things have changed (and I don’t believe they have), Docs actually has more features than O365, including the ability for multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously. O365 didn’t have this functionality before, and I’m not sure that they’ve added it over the last 6 months.

Other than the Exchange users of the world (which to be fair is a majority), I’ve always thought Office was a bit overhyped. Yes, Exchange’s integration with Outlook is phenomenal, but otherwise – I’ve really yet to find anything in any other core component of Office that isn’t available in LibreOffice/OpenOffice, or online in Google Docs. (Lone exception being MS Access, because LO’s Base is not as capable from what I’ve read.)

I hate to say this, but the ‘subscription model’ does nothing but screw the consumer, and this goes for both Office and Adobe Creative Cloud. You have to hit several years of subscription before you equal out the cost of the software up front…and only then are you going to end up ahead by using subscription instead. Office releases a new version every 3 years, and truthfully, very little changes version to version (save for unnecessary GUI changes). Adobe changes more frequently, but even there, not much changes version to version (despite what Adobe would want you to believe).

I think at this point, Microsoft has sold Office more based on reputation than need. A lot of people have this idea that they have to have Office [something] to do anything with any business, and that’s not the case (and hasn’t been the case for a long time). Even if you’re paying someone for an Exchange server, or Exchange email service, you don’t need Outlook, especially when there’s OWA (Outlook Web Access), as well as free email clients like Thunderbird.

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Not sure to get your point. You say :

zero2dash wrote:

I hate to say this, but the ‘subscription model’ does nothing but screw the consumer, and this goes for both Office and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Then :

zero2dash wrote:

You have to hit several years of subscription before you equal out the cost of the software up front… and only then are you going to end up ahead by using subscription instead.

Which seems to contradict your previous sentence.

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My guess would be that there’s a subjective value judgment in that statement.

If Microsoft were actually improving Office by leaps and bounds in ways that are meaningful to business users, then I suspect it would be considered “worthwhile” to pay for the subscription. But they don’t seem to think they need to do much of anything good to it in order to justify ongoing subscription billing.

The first thing they need to do is offer something other than a “polar bear in a snowstorm” color scheme, so that it’s as easy to see the various parts of the UI as it used to be (you know, back when Microsoft cared about such things, before the flat, lifeless look took over around the time of Windows 8).

The second thing they need to do is get it through their thick heads that not everyone wants their documents to be in the cloud, or even close to it. Some of us consider data security more important than mindlessly storing our important data “somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care”.

-Noel

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Needless to say, I myself am a cloud-hater and subscription model-hater. Once upon a time, people used to buy things when they needed them, and that was that. Forking money for a second time used to entail needing something else, or giving in to a really, really better mousetrap.

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Noel, I could not agree more. In my book and every person outside of the most sophisticated offices, the product has not had a meaningful change in at least 16 years. In fact, most of them object to the “user friendly” ribbon that came in 2007. Hence, everyone I know would not even consider paying for a newer one, let alone paying rent for it.

Word is the main thing and it passed the point of full usefulness decades ago.

As for the cloud, I would not touch it with a 10 foot barge pole. In fact, when my clients ask about it, I tell them it is a waste of money. Your computer has 500G capacity, you are using less than 100, why in heavens name would you want to store it some where else?

On top of that, the idea of backing up to the cloud, in my book is completely silly. I own a 2T backup drive that more than fills my needs and it cost less than $150 and will likely last at least 10 years.

When I work on a client computer, one of my first acts is to delete the cloud software and make sure their Office software is storing locally.

CT

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I stopped writing books about Office when the ribbon became dominant.

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woody wrote:

I stopped writing books about Office when the ribbon became dominant.

Good for you. Woody.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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Canadian Tech wrote:

It will be very interesting to see statistics on new computer sales following the October end to Win7. In my circles, among the many people I am in contact with, I do not know of a single one who has bought a PC since October.

I bought a new desktop PC several months before October, so that I could get Windows 7 with a pre-Skylake CPU (I got a Haswell).

As far as anyone buying new PCs since October, my company is in the process of issuing new Windows 10 laptops. My dept. just got ours about two months ago.

Also, my sister just bought a new Windows 10 desktop PC. She bought W10 knowingly, because we had thoroughly discussed W7 vs W10.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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woody wrote:

I stopped writing books about Office when the ribbon became dominant.

Once I got used to the ribbon, I never wanted to go back.

It’s been so long since I worked without the ribbon, I wonder how I would fare without it now.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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MrJimPhelps,

Have you ever rationalised your preference ? The pro argument is supposed to be that users will find functions that, without the ribbon, they wouldn’t even know existed.

I tend to be a ribbonophobe, first because I’m stuck with Office 2003, but mainly because a) it’s untidy, developers dump interface objects on the ribbon the way they would fly-tip refuse, b) it takes precious workspace out of our already vertically-challenged flat panels, c) so many people having made the switch to ribbon-“enabled” Office hate hate hate it.

Also, my understanding is that Office ribbon menus are less customisable than their classical counterparts.

I do admit, though, that they have a cute factor I am deprived of. Ribbons look nice.

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It certainly started a fad for all the other Office (Microsoft) wannabees. Then a bunch of other program vendors jumped on it too.

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All I’m saying is that down here on the street, the stats don’t meet the smell test. From the street, Microsoft has fallen very far from being an interesting company.

CT

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I would agree, not as interesting as it used to be.

But it’s still highly profitable, and going into different markets.

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@jmwoods:

Guess you should be careful reading my post up there…it was composed in Word 2000 and then pasted into the message box. Never know what it might have caught between my copy of Word and the message area here.

In sixteen years, it (and I) have never had a problem that can be attributed to ‘Word’ (or Excel).

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