bill - 4:41 am on Jan 31, 2013 (gmt 0)

>>Sure OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs and the like are fine if you're only using it yourself or collaborating with others using the same software. False. That's an excuse.

No excuse. It comes from experience. There are enough inconsistencies with formatting, macros, complex tables that it's simply not a solution to switch to these free alternatives if you use anything even remotely complex in Office.

Sure if you're using Word like it was NotePad, or Excel like it was for CSV files only then you're good to go. Don't get me started on PowerPoint or Access compatibility or the lack of an Outlook replacement. If the free options work for you that's great, but I won't agree with you about the inconsistencies between them and Office. In a larger organization that uses Office it would not be advisable to switch to one of these free alternatives if consistency is important in your documents or data.

That aside, this new subscription plan has been a long time coming for MS. They have been tossing the idea around for years, but it hasn't been until recently that IT people have become used to paying annually for online services on an annual basis. It's been MS's dream to get everyone paying for their software annually. Office 2013 marks a big shift for them in this direction. They're making the one-time payment options pretty unattractive.