In October 2009, Microsoft made an unusual jump into the \u201cfree\u201d software market.\u00a0 It allowed original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Dell, HP, and Lenovo to install a replacement to the previously discontinued Microsoft Works suite.\u00a0 The offering was called Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition.\u00a0 This starter set of Office only included Word and Excel.\u00a0 In fact, these versions were a subset of the base products, because they had reduced functionality.\u00a0 In addition, they were sponsored with relatively unobtrusive Microsoft-sponsored ads.<\/p>\n
Face it; if you only used those two Office products, and wanted to save more than $100, you used the \u201cfree\u201d version of Office that came pre-installed on your computer.\u00a0 Many of my clients did that \u2013 because the two products just worked and people\u00a0 found they didn\u2019t need the advanced functionality.\u00a0 However, Microsoft believed that most consumers would eventually click on one of the ad links and purchase the fully functional version.<\/p>\n
This experiment lasted less than three years.\u00a0 In June 2012, Microsoft announced to the OEMs that they could no longer pre-install the Office 2010 Starter Edition.\u00a0 With that announcement, the OEMs could offer either a 60-day trial or let you purchase the full product.\u00a0 There was no \u201cin between\u201d version available.<\/p>\n
So what should a consumer do?\u00a0 Naturally, there are two options.\u00a0 The first is based on the long-standing practice of purchasing software and installing it on your desktop.\u00a0 The second is based on the new way things are heading.\u00a0 In this case, you use a web browser and put your files in the cloud.\u00a0 Let\u2019s discuss each of these options.<\/p>\n
The lowest priced version of Office 2010 costs around $120.\u00a0 This is the Home and Student version.\u00a0 All you need to purchase is the product key, which contains the 25-digit code to unlock the Office 2010 software that is already installed on your computer.\u00a0 If you want, or need, to use Outlook for your email, you\u2019ll have to spend about $70 more for the Home and Business version.<\/p>\n
The second option requires a leap of faith and the desire (and ability) to learn new ways of doing things.\u00a0 Here, you would to select to use the preview version of Microsoft Office Web Apps.\u00a0 This is (for now) a free, online, edition of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that relies on a scaled-back subset of the desktop versions\u2019 features.\u00a0 It requires using Microsoft\u2019s SkyDrive (something you have to sign up for separately).<\/p>\n
SkyDrive gives you 7 GB of storage in the cloud, and is accessible from a web browser.\u00a0 This means you can access your files from any computer anywhere there is an Internet connection.\u00a0 The Office Web Apps can work in conjunction with the desktop versions of Office, but do not require it.<\/p>\n
Office Web Apps is still considered to be in \u201cpreview\u201d mode.\u00a0 This is the equivalent of \u201cbeta\u201d software, so that means you cannot depend on it 100% of the time.\u00a0 It also means that your support is solely through email or community forums.\u00a0 However, because it runs in a browser, Microsoft can update the functions and features on a regular basis \u2013 without performing any updates on your computer \u2013 to make sure that these programs operate properly.<\/p>\n
So, give Microsoft more than $100 for software so you can work on your desktop, or give Microsoft your files so that you can work on them in the cloud.\u00a0 The decision is up to you, and in most cases will be based on what you want.\u00a0 To get a glimpse of what the future holds, take a look at \u201cWorking with Microsoft in the Cloud Using SkyDrive<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If you have any questions about Microsoft Office, please let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In October 2009, Microsoft made an unusual jump into the \u201cfree\u201d software market.\u00a0 It allowed original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Dell, HP, and Lenovo to install a replacement to the previously discontinued Microsoft Works suite.\u00a0 The offering was called Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition.\u00a0 This starter set of Office only included Word and Excel.\u00a0 In …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-users","category-microsoft-office-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}