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TheBrain v10 Alpha is available
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Posted by Franz Grieser
Aug 31, 2018 at 06:15 PM
Paul J. Miller wrote:
>When I buy a program it keeps on working (or at least it’s supposed to
>keep on working) indefinately.
Yes. And you have both options with Microsoft Office: Either go the subscription road or the software license road.
>Yes I agree there are many programs you
>can use to open Microsoft Office files so why not use Libre Office, it’s
>free !
I use both, plus Textmaker (because of the Duden Korrektor, the best German spellchecker and grammar checker).
I use Word a) because it has a superior outliner (the Navigator in LibreOffice and in Textmaker is merely a joke) and b) because I occasionally exchange files with colleagues/editors/proof-readers and have to see the changes they made (in the past, LibreOffice didn’t show all changes so I went back to Word).
Posted by Paul J. Miller
Aug 31, 2018 at 11:29 PM
Not true !
Microsoft are not issuing any new licenses for Microsoft Office, the ones on sale now are the ones which were previously issued by Microsoft. Furthermore they are deleting existing licenses, if you have a license which you bought and installed on a computer then it will continue to work, however if you have to re-install Office for any reason (even on the same computer it was originally installed on) the license will not re-activate. Also the telephone service to get an activation number has been discontinued.
If you buy a license for a previous version of Microsoft Office now and it has not been activated before it will activate precisely once and thats your lot.
All new instances of Microsoft Office are the subscription version.
I do agree however that Libre Office does need a usable outliner. As an outliner Navigator is abysmal.
Franz Grieser wrote:
>
>Yes. And you have both options with Microsoft Office: Either go the
>subscription road or the software license road.
>
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 1, 2018 at 07:19 AM
Paul J. Miller wrote:
>Microsoft are not issuing any new licenses for Microsoft Office, the
>ones on sale now are the ones which were previously issued by Microsoft.
> Furthermore they are deleting existing licenses, if you have a license
>which you bought and installed on a computer then it will continue to
>work, however if you have to re-install Office for any reason (even on
>the same computer it was originally installed on) the license will not
>re-activate. Also the telephone service to get an activation number has
>been discontinued.
Is this official?
Posted by Paul J. Miller
Sep 1, 2018 at 09:36 AM
I thought it was but upon further investigation it seems Office 2016 is still being sold.
See https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?tab=1.
The version I was using was Office 2010 and all support for versions earlier than 2016 has been dropped. I bought this software in 2015 and had it installed for 18 months before having to re-install it on the same computer due to an unrelated problem with the computer.
The license key would not re-activate and the telephone support for re-activation had been discontinued. So I got 18 months for over £150 !
I made the choice to buy 2010 because the user interface for both 2013 and even more so for 2016 are much worse and no new useful functionality has been added.
So it seems that Franz Grieser is correct the licensed version of Microsoft Office 2016 is still available, I stand corrected.
Posted by tightbeam
Sep 1, 2018 at 03:35 PM
How silly and shrill. Microsoft doesn’t “hold your documents and files as a hostage against future payments.” If you stop paying for the software, or for the storage space, then they’ll quite properly take back the software and the storage space, but the files are *yours* and ought to exist on your local computer as well as wherever you put them in the cloud. Rants against Microsoft (or Apple) add nothing to the conversation. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
Paul J. Miller wrote:
I am not a subscriber.
>
>I don’t believe in rental software - or ‘Software As A Sentence’.
>
>To be fair TheBrain Technologies model of ‘Software As A Sentence’ where
>you get left with a working copy of the last vesion you were using if
>you stop paying the rent isn’t as pernicious as the Microsoft model
>(Office 365) where they hold your documents and files as a hostage
>against future payments!
>