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

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.

Will that model support security that includes RSA tokens?

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Will that model support security that includes RSA tokens?

No idea. I've never deployed them, just know of companies that are evaluating them.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

No idea. I've never deployed them, just know of companies that are evaluating them.

Thanks. The way things are today, with China’s active espionage and malicious intrusion threats 24/7 from across the globe, security is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear about computing solutions that access the network remotely.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Thanks. The way things are today, with China’s active espionage and malicious intrusion threats 24/7 from across the globe, security is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear about computing solutions that access the network remotely.

Thin clients are actually a lot more secure in the sense that it's much easier to avoid executing code on them, and in some cases, it's impossible depending on the OS.

Purpose-built devices tend to be much more secure while less tightly-couple hardware and software (e.g. Windows PC's and Android devices) tend to be a lot more vulnerable.

With COVID, I know of companies that have 10's of thousands of remote employees working on PC's, including my own. A lot of them have abandoned hardware tokens in favor of soft tokens on smart phones and things like that.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Thin clients are actually a lot more secure in the sense that it's much easier to avoid executing code on them, and in some cases, it's impossible depending on the OS.

Purpose-built devices tend to be much more secure while less tightly-couple hardware and software (e.g. Windows PC's and Android devices) tend to be a lot more vulnerable.

With COVID, I know of companies that have 10's of thousands of remote employees working on PC's, including my own. A lot of them have abandoned hardware tokens in favor of soft tokens on smart phones and things like that.

I’m not thinking resting data so much as maliciously accessing the network, if that makes sense. As you can tell I’m asking from the end-user perspective. RSA tokens have been on smart devices for some time now. DOD companies use them on laptops, even they have sent many thousands of their workers to work from home, except for those who need to work onsite in a secured facility.

[Fish]

I'm pretty spoiled. My position provides me with downloads of almost all Microsoft apps on all platforms, every single Adobe app(all platforms), the entire Google suite, Unlimited storage on Google, Unlimited storage on Box.com, 50GB on MEGA, 1TB on OneDrive, 1TB Dropbox, and a personal Furk.net subscription.

Any friends here need any software, I can probably find a way to help you out... PM me..

[BigRichard]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Interesting.

We use primarily WebEx and Bluejeans but also have experience with Teams, Zoom, GoTo, and several others.

Teams hardly ever works well enough. WebEx tends to be the most reliable. We've moved several Teams installations to other platforms.

Teams kicks ass at our business. Outside of a few hiccups with sharing files to external people it works great. And I would say 70% of the businesses we work with are using it as well.

[cooper barrett]

We used Teams and had very little issues and they were quickly corrected.

Ghosting when using backgrounds was my biggest gripe.

Originally Posted by BigRichard

Teams kicks ass at our business. Outside of a few hiccups with sharing files to external people it works great. And I would say 70% of the businesses we work with are using it as well.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by vailpass

I’m not thinking resting data so much as maliciously accessing the network, if that makes sense. As you can tell I’m asking from the end-user perspective. RSA tokens have been on smart devices for some time now. DOD companies use them on laptops, even they have sent many thousands of their workers to work from home, except for those who need to work onsite in a secured facility.

Yeah, 2-factor auth is the biggest preventative to unauthorized access, used in conjunction with a VPN.

The thing about thin clients is that the device itself is less of a staging area for network-based attacks. Windows machines are usually the source of 3/4 of all attacks on an internal network.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by BigRichard

Teams kicks ass at our business. Outside of a few hiccups with sharing files to external people it works great. And I would say 70% of the businesses we work with are using it as well.

Interestingly enough, the worst experiences I've had with Teams are using it to collaborate with Microsoft themselves. Perhaps they're just not very good at using their own software.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by cooper barrett

We used Teams and had very little issues and they were quickly corrected.

Ghosting when using backgrounds was my biggest gripe.

That's an issue with most of them, unfortunately. With transmission delay, camera resolution, and the protocols involved, we've still got a ways to go before it's broadcast quality.

[DaFace]

Returning to this, Microsoft 365 is a no brainer if you have people you want to share your subscription with. I finally decided to migrate from Dropbox. I hadn't realized that you get SIX accounts for $100/year, and those six accounts can each install it on 5 devices. Granted most people won't actually install it that many places, but in theory that's 30 installs of Office and 6TB of storage for $100.

I've shared it with my brother, parents, and grandparents who all had Dropbox subscriptions. As a group, we all just got a discount of $300 a year and got Office for free.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Returning to this, Microsoft 365 is a no brainer if you have people you want to share your subscription with. I finally decided to migrate from Dropbox. I hadn't realized that you get SIX accounts for $100/year, and those six accounts can each install it on 5 devices. Granted most people won't actually install it that many places, but in theory that's 30 installs of Office and 6TB of storage for $100.

I've shared it with my brother, parents, and grandparents who all had Dropbox subscriptions. As a group, we all just got a discount of $300 a year and got Office for free.

That's actually a great deal.

We're prepping for a Gmail / G Suite transition next weekend. 140K people moving off of MS, at least for the time being.

[htismaqe]

Some interesting stats out today from IDC...

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/17...old-macs-2020/

It's from MacRumors so the headline is about Chrome OS outpacing MacOS but the real story here is the top line in the graph. It's obvious Google is making headway.

[srvy]

So did this guy ever get advice on where to purchase the product he asked about? It seems more like 101 reasons to not use Microsoft Office.