Where is the cheapest and best place to get Microsoft Office?

[Chief Roundup]

I am needing Microsoft Office that has Word, Excel, Power Point, etc. all included. I found on Microsoft.com that it is $149. Surely there has to be a cheaper deal that that.
Also I have seen there is a Microsoft Office 365. It is only like $35.00 and comes with more than just the main 3 programs.
I am not sure which to purchase and why a person would purchase one over the other. Trying to make the best purchase.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

And for the record, I personally HATE Google. I'm an Apple guy myself.

But professionally, I've seen what works and what doesn't. Google is rapidly closing the gap and Microsoft is pricing itself right out of the marketplace.

I don’t doubt it. Nobody ever got rich betting against Google.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Excel was created right as I got out of college and I got assigned to learn it in my first job. It's been my main work tool (along with Word) for over 30 years now. It's kind of amazing to think about.

Wow. That puts it into perspective. It would be cool if there were a way to calculate how much more productive you were over that time period with Excel than if you had been without it.

[cooper barrett]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Oh and speaking of collaboration, MS Teams is ****ing awful.

I used Teams with a fortune 100 company who had all employees other than essential working from home. Once set up properly, worked great.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Same. Ditto for SharePoint/OneDrive, though we do have weird conflicts from time to time. Not near enough to be a major problem, though.

We've dumped our entire file server at this point, and it's been fine.

It does help that we're a small office of relatively tech savvy folks, so it's easy to train people on where to find stuff. That would be considerably more difficult with a ton of people, some of whom should be featured on those Progressive commercials.

To be fair, mom and dad are the folks that should be in the Progressive commercials and we dumped our server years ago. It’s Dropbox, but on the functional side it’s way easier to use than a server.

[scho63]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Not true.

There are enterprises out there with 40K home office workers using Google docs because Sharepoint simply doesn't work with that kind of setup.

SharePoint is a dog.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by scho63

SharePoint is a dog.

A 3-legged one at that.

[arrowheadnation]

I bought a student license off ebay a couple weeks ago for $29. It used to be that you could get one for like $6, but O365 put the kabosh on that.

[Just Passin' By]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

And for the record, I personally HATE Google. I'm an Apple guy myself.

But professionally, I've seen what works and what doesn't. Google is rapidly closing the gap and Microsoft is pricing itself right out of the marketplace.

Apple closing down their own versions (a long time ago, now) certainly didn't help with variety.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Just Passin' By

Apple closing down their own versions (a long time ago, now) certainly didn't help with variety.

?

Apple still has their own versions. I use them every day.

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

By the way, if I had to guess, Windows in the enterprise will soon be headed the same way. I see a lot of companies going to alternate solutions. You could see enterprise Chromebooks in the next few years.

The cost differential is just huge. A Chromebook you could literally throw away and replace if it broke. Windows PC's are 10x more costly to support, secure, and admin.

10 yrs ago I had almost our entire company of a couple thousand people all using thin clients. We have gotten quite a bit larger now and have a "desktop" team and they convinced the highers up to go back to Windows. I tried to tell them there is no reason to do that when we run VDI but what do I know, I am just a dumb sysadmin turned exec. idiots

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by dirk digler

10 yrs ago I had almost our entire company of a couple thousand people all using thin clients. We have gotten quite a bit larger now and have a "desktop" team and they convinced the highers up to go back to Windows. I tried to tell them there is no reason to do that when we run VDI but what do I know, I am just a dumb sysadmin turned exec. idiots

Yep.

The most forward-thinking organizations are looking at Chromebooks now. It's like VDI, only without the capital infrastructure. You just buy the service from Google and away you go.

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Yep.

The most forward-thinking organizations are looking at Chromebooks now. It's like VDI, only without the capital infrastructure. You just buy the service from Google and away you go.

I actually tested out using ChromeBooks this past year to try do that and we ran into a couple of issues that we couldn't overcome at the time. Don't really remember what they were now but I think remote support was one issue.

With us using VDI I see no reason to spend 1k-1200K for Windows PC with all the software shit you have to put it on it to admin etc when i was doing thin clients for $300-400 each.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by dirk digler

I actually tested out using ChromeBooks this past year to try do that and we ran into a couple of issues that we couldn't overcome at the time. Don't really remember what they were now but I think remote support was one issue.

With us using VDI I see no reason to spend 1k-1200K for Windows PC with all the software shit you have to put it on it to admin etc when i was doing thin clients for $300-400 each.

The overhead on Windows PC's is WAY more than the cost of the PC. Licensing, management and security software, support, etc. Microsoft is literally riding the "they've used Windows so long, they can't change" train. Most companies don't want to risk it.

There's on old saying in the infrastructure business:

"Nobody ever gets fired for selecting Microsoft, IBM, or Cisco."

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

The overhead on Windows PC's is WAY more than the cost of the PC. Licensing, management and security software, support, etc. Microsoft is literally riding the "they've used Windows so long, they can't change" train. Most companies don't want to risk it.

There's on old saying in the infrastructure business:

"Nobody ever gets fired for selecting Microsoft, IBM, or Cisco."

lol I tried to tell them the exact same thing. They just don't get it..whatever

[Just Passin' By]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

?

Apple still has their own versions. I use them every day.

My original post wasn't clear at all, so my apologies. Apple kept closing down versions rather than keeping the old line alive while taking a new approach with a different line. When you add that to the drive to make it all compatible, to at least some extent, with Microsoft, it limited the variety.