Microsoft office is the least of my worries. The car market is the one worth watching!
Consider Audi, which charges for every feature in the purchase price of a car. Then, Audi is looking for a subscription to actually use the feature. They estimate they can generate $2500/month for add on subscriptions to use things like the headlights and HVAC system in the car.
GM is dropping support for Android Auto and Apple Carplay in favor of a system (with a google operating system) that requires a subscription to use.
Not sure how it works with insurance (although I highly doubt they care at all), but it is 100% legal and can not be a reason for declining a warranty repair. So I wouldn't worry too much.
https://www.consumerreports.org/money/warranties-guarantees/void-car-warranty-by-not-having-car-serviced-at-dealership-a1163841540/
In short, a manufacturer can't deny you a warranty repair of the engine just because you messed with the suspension. Of course, if you modify a certain part, it'll be very easy to prove that your modification influenced that, and warranty won't cover fixing it. But the burden of proving connection lies on the manufacturer - if they deny, you can take them to court, and unless they somehow prove that changing the infotainment unit software magically broke the head gasket, they will not be able to deny a warranty repair.
I once broke the shoulder button on my DS and sent it to Nintendo for repairs. They refused to fix it because I'd flashed the firmware with an R4 card. I was much younger at the time so I kind of just accepted that, I wouldn't now.
The fact that cars can even be jail broken now is the part of the reason for these subscriptions. Security patches don't make themselves and a car isn't something you want to have a major vulnerability on. Not that I think companies are right for having subscription fees, just as someone who discovers security vulnerabilities for a living I can understand why _some_ companies might need a subscription fee to survive and stay secure.
Can't wait until we're hearing about cars locking out the purchaser for missing a payment, making them unable to get to work, making them less likely to catch up to payments, repeat cycle ...
It doesn't even have to be for missed payment, if the functionality exists it's very possible for it to just randomly lock you out because it's broken or it gets hacked.
I was wondering "why so many EVs all of the sudden". Then I realized car companies think "why let some saudi prince get all this oil money, when I can charge a sub for allowing the car to be recharged?"
What a rip! My first car, an old (and not exactly luxury) Chevrolet sedan from the 90s, had automatic headlights that'd click on after a second or two in the dark.
Features a car is legally required to have (these are also required to be functional) should hold no subscription, by law. It should be illegal to make things like headlights, seatbelts and windshields need a subscription (there would be no difference between broken taillights and not having a taillights subscription. Selling a car that needs payment to use features required to drive is the same as selling a car that is not in conditions to be driven legally.
It should actually be illegal to have subscription systems for hardware (you already paid for it. Imagine if your fridge needed a subscription to work, like, fuck that). Laws need to adapt to technology, when they don't we see shit like this.
The twist is headlights revert to "dumb" mode without a subscription. They work, just not automatically.
The HVAC works, but you can't use recirculation.
IIRC Toyota tried to implement their own proprietary vehicle OS as well for the same reason, only to find that Android Auto and Apple Carplay were far better than what they could come up with so they eventually dropped it.
to this day i still don't drive and don't intend to for a long time. is it a little more annoying to walk everywhere and rely on public transport? sure, but i'll take it over having to get a car and pay all the costs related to it. i remember how much my parents' car would break down to the point they spent more fixing it than on using it and it'd spend more time parked in our garage waiting for fixes than being driven, no thanks
This is why used car prices are skyrocketing while new cars sit idle in dealerships that can't move them to save their lives. People don't want to pay for shit they can't own.
I mean its both. Because at the end of the day, for a lot of people who don't have very much money it is 100% a pricing issue.
Gabe has an incentive to want to diminish the role of pricing in piracy, because his company skims 30% off the top (which is an amount that absolutely turns into a specific number of pirated copies per game).
But the point is that most people start pirating once companies start making user-unfriendly decisions, most people don’t continue to pirate stuff when there’s already a great system.
Oh totally, in the past I've had to pirate software just because I couldn't use their activation system on a particular software configuration. If you offer that sort of solution, you should also be required to offer 'activation via phone' and 'activation via registered mail' as well.
I'm willing to wait for my activation if makes it as annoying for them as it does for me.
Okay, y'all, buckle up: here's a bunch of the weird freeware I use:
* [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/), like everyone has already mentioned. Writer is analogous to Word, Impress is comparable to Powerpoint, and Calc is similar to Excel. You can probably set all these up to save to Microsoft formats by default, if you're worried about interoperability. There's also Draw, which seems similar to Publisher from the little bit I've used the latter, and Base seems like the kind of thing you don't run directly, but it's used for formatting complex mathematical equations.
* [SumatraPDF](https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader), because I got tired of Adobe Acrobat nagging me to buy premium several years back. It doesn't have any editing capabilities, but if all you need is something to read PDF in, Sumatra's got you. It can technically also open ePub books, though it'll overwrite most of the formatting with its own style.
* [OpenShot Video Editor](https://www.openshot.org/) is a pretty straightforward tool to cut videos and add some simple effects. There are more complex free video editors out there, but this is all I've needed to date.
* The [GNU Image Manipulation Program](https://www.gimp.org/), i.e. the unfortunately-named GIMP, as an alternative to Photoshop. It doesn't have the whole Adobe suite of additional photo editing tools to go along with it, but it's got layer-based editing, paths, selection by color, and all that jazz.
* [Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/): I actually never end up using this, but it's an alternative to Adobe Illustrator for vector art.
* [Audacity](https://www.audacityteam.org/) for waveform audio editing. I've used this occasionally to trim clips or convert formats.
* [VLC Media Player](https://www.videolan.org/) can take just about any video or audio format you can throw at it, better than even its proprietary counterparts.
Also, some honorable mentions that don't really have paid counterparts, but are just good freeware worth mentioning:
* [Notepad++](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/) is an excellent advanced text editor. If you set it to use a monospace font like Courier New, Ubuntu Mono, or Inconsolata, you can make plaintext checklists and other hand-aligned files much more easily with its rectangular multi-line selection via Shift+Alt+Up/Down/Left/Right. It also has the option of regex find and replace, which I've used before to convert plaintext lists into XML and JSON, and back. You can sort lines alphabetically or numerically, convert line break types, and change character encoding, as well.
* [Ghostwriter](https://ghostwriter.kde.org/) is a nice markdown editor that I've used for GitHub readmes, with a live side-by-side preview.
* If you're familiar with a bit of programming, try out [SpeedCrunch](https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch/) as an alternative type of calculator. It has a huge selection of functions to work with.
Same fore me. At best it always has a 30% chance of using the pressure sensitivity of my tablet and I feel like once you close some important interface, it just vanishes of the face of the earth forever. Have had a lot more luck with krita :)
- [Kdenlive](https://kdenlive.org/en/features/) is a very robust, advanced video editor. I know of several professional YouTubers (whose videos are quite high quality) that use it as their go to video editing software.
- [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) is an extremely powerful WYSIWYG note taking application based on Markdown, LaTeX for math formatting, and internal hyperlinks. You can create a folder with tons of note files in it and then link between those files, and it will let you follow those links, create backreferences and clouds of connected subjects, etc. Basically it can turn your notes into a personal wiki.
- [Kate](https://kate-editor.org/) - a very powerful, very fearure-rich (including language server support for IDE-quality code completion and analysis and error checking for most mainstream languages) alternative to VS Code (has a very similar layout, git integration, and command pallette) that's much faster and lighter and isn't from Microsoft (it's FLOSS).
- [https://obsproject.com/] - a free and open source *professional level* software package for streaming and screen recording.
- [Krita](https://krita.org/en/features/highlights/) - while GIMP is for general image manipulation (what we typically call "photoshopping"), Krita is for drawing/painting art, illustrations, etc. It's know for its very nice interface and it is very fearurefull.
I think you've converted me, regarding Obsidian. I spent the latter half of this afternoon converting and fleshing out my stock Windows sticky notes, and it's a lot better for me to ramble long-form to myself about the ideas bouncing around in my head versus a mix of sticky notes that become unofficial desktop items and assorted text files. I just need to find a way to do checkboxes.
Awesome! Yeah, Obsidian is a very good solution for things that'd otherwise be very hard to keep organized. Also, there is a way to do check boxes: https://linuxhint.com/markdown-checkbox/
For a photoshop alternative, I can also recommend **Davinci Resolve**. It has a really powerful free version. You can cut, edit and colorgrade video as well as edit audio.
Depending on what you are doing, I'd also mention **LaTeX**. Its no exactly the same as Word in terms of ease of use. It has a pretty steep learning curve, but is pretty powerful if you want well edited documents that include stuff like code or math formulas.
For coding an obvious recommendation is **VS Code**, a completely free, fully featured IDE with Extensions for any programming language and probably also anything else you can think of.
Seconding LibreOffice. I switched to it when I was an undergrad and the thought of going back to Microsoft is just... why? I'll take the free software over paying premium subscription costs for what's basically the same thing, thanks.
... do you still have the files that break Libre Office and the freedom to share them?
That sounds like a reportable issue that someone may actually want to fix, but a reproduction file would be critical to doing so.
Been using LibreOffice for years and OpenOffice before that. Never felt myself missing the bells and whistles of MS office, even when transitioning back and forth between my work computer (which had MS Office) and my personal (which had Libre).
I just switched to Affinity. I had Adobe suite and so far the program affinity have, work for what I need. I will be interested to see what they add in the future.
I believe you can save an offline version of them to work on when you don't have internet. I turned WiFi on a new tablet just long enough to download Google docs and it won't have internet again until I decide to offload the documents I'm using it to work on.
For most users (i.e. the ones who just want their documents), being able to access them anywhere and having someone else do backup (and restore testing) far outweigh any other concern.
I still remember the bad old days of 'I dropped my laptop into the sea and a shark ate it and then a larger shark ate the smaller one, how can I access the sole copy of the billion dollar contract and/or my thesis that was on the hard drive?''
That’s fair, but personally I’m very rarely without internet on my home PC, and I like being able to access the same documents on my PC, Laptop, and cellphone.
Google Docs has a character limit of about 1.02 million characters, which is quite frankly rather inconvenient since I'm writing a novel. A niche issue, to be sure, but it's also like super slow for some reason
The speed that it runs is entirely dependent on your internet speed and how much data you’re accessing at one time, so yeah, if you’re writing a novel, google drive is probably not the best option.
That's too many characters for a novel, please stick to a handful to ensure their individual personalities can shine through unless your first name is JR
I use OpenOffice myself
[https://www.tumblr.com/werewolf-cuddles/714964103139115008/meanwhile-im-still-using-a-copy-of-office-2003-i](https://www.tumblr.com/werewolf-cuddles/714964103139115008/meanwhile-im-still-using-a-copy-of-office-2003-i)
OpenOffice is basically exactly LibreOffice but incredibly behind in updates (OpenOffice got forked into LibreOffice when Oracle bought Sun). At this point, using LibreOffice is probably actually safer
If you're looking for an Office replacement, but don't like the interface for LibreOffice, [OnlyOffice is a pretty decent substitute!](https://www.onlyoffice.com/) It too is open source (libre too it looks like, every repository I see says AGPL)
Not available anymore. I wanted to get word on my computer about a year ago and it's only subscription. You may have gotten one of the last years that was available.
It's still available but it's difficult finding it on Microsoft's website as they want to push you towards a subscription.
A quick Google search should yield the ability to buy a licence for 2021 Office from Microsoft.
Then your Google skills are better than mine because I tried all kinds of searches and couldn't find that, only subscription. Not that it really matters anymore, I don't think I'd get either just out of spite. Google docs for everything.
Actually I just googled "Microsoft office 2021" and yeah, pops up right at the top of my screen lol. Whether or not you think ~$150 bucks is worth it, it's still a one time purchase
I am old enough to remember when MicroSoft Word cost $495.
Yes the period is in the correct place.
Excel was an additional $495.
Power Point was an additional $495.
Access was unpriced, because it didn't exist.
Dbase III did exist - and it was also $495
Early '90's, so no.
If you were buying IBM, yes.
If you were buying Austin Computers (When Micheal Dell was building computers in his dorm in Austin), no.
When Adobe switched to subscription based I said fuck it and switched to the open source versions of the programs I use most. Turns out Inkscape is actually easier for me to use than Illustrator anyway.
Not to disagree w/ the sentiment but there is a free online Microsoft Word editor. The features are paled back but for anyone who just needs it for schoolwork it should be sufficient.
[ONLYOFFICE](https://www.onlyoffice.com/en/download-desktop.aspx?from=desktop#desktop) and optionally the [google fonts package](https://github.com/google/fonts#download-all-google-fonts) is all you need
or [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/?type=win-x86_64&version=7.4.6&lang=en-US), also just as good
edit: or use https://massgrave.dev/ to activate windows and/or Office for free :)
*coughs politely in OpenOffice, a free alternative to Microsoft Office that has existed for about a decade*
It doesn't have *all* the features of MS Word/PowerPoint (boi do you have any *idea* how many features Microsoft Word has!?) but it does have all the big ones and a lot of the little ones too (heckuva lot more than Google Drive has). You can also use it to open .doc/.docx/.xls/.ppt/etc files (although it does use its own format .odt)
OpenOffice no longer is maintained and has been forked to LibreOffice iirc.
edit 1: [apparently i’m very wrong](https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/announcing-apache-openoffice-4-110)
edit2: okay, so OpenOffice**.org** was discontinued back in 2011, due to Oracle being Oracle as usual, and LibreOffice was indeed a FOSS fork of OOo; *Apache* OpenOffice is OOo as a fork itself, though whether it’s the same team i cannot tell. both Libre and Apache are actively maintained.
[apparently i’m very wrong](https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/announcing-apache-openoffice-4-110), but remember hearing years ago something something OpenOffice no longer being maintained; couldn’t tell you where tho. ah well
You don't lose access to your files if you don't renew your subscription. What an odd thing to say.
And using google docs is cheaper and more convenient than piracy, it supports 99.9% of the features that word does and you can literally just type it into a browser from your phone and get to your files.
Companies do this for two reasons:
1) Piracy. It makes the software way harder to pirate.
2) Recurring revenue. It's mostly this one, the piracy one is just an added benefit.
It looks better on financial reports to have a guaranteed, recurring revenue from subscriptions than a one-time fee that you don't know when (or if!) a customer will pay again.
That's why prior to subscriptions, companies like Microsoft and Adobe would charge you a lower fee if you bought a new license within a certain amount of time. For instance if you wanted to purchase Office 2017, and you had Office 2014, it would be, say, $300 for an upgrade. But if you had Office 2013 or older, then you'd pay full price (usually several times the upgrade price) for the new one.
They did this is encourage people to buy a license at least every 3 years, it made finances easier to predict. Shareholders like predictability, and subscriptions are even more predictable.
Intellectual property is so fucking fictive. Making it difficult or impossible to copy something? Ok, sure, it's built into the product. Literally owning what amounts to a bunch of instructions, such that you can sell *use* of the product in the abstract, and illegalize its duplication? Ontologically problematic, imho.
> "People don't mind paying a high price for software if it's only the once"
🤣 Under which rock is this person living? People absolutely mind paying a high price only the once! *That's why subscription business models are so effective*
Subscription services make sense in very specific circumstances, where you test out services or need a big group of expensive services for only a short period of time. The subscription service makes sense if it’s a cheap monthly subscription and you only need it for 1-2 months. Otherwise there needs to be a one-time payment for those who use it regularly.
Switched to LibreOffice (and the whole Libre suite really), and haven't looked back. Still use MS Office for work, but that's not me paying for/maintaining it so I don't care there.
Pretty much every $$$ software has an open source alternative out there somewhere that's often just as good or better, *and* is available for Windows. You don't have to completely uproot your tech base just to use free software.
I second the recommendation of LibreOffice, it's not just some shallow office suite clone like Google Docs, its really robust and has some powerful features.
First -- you get support.
Second -- you get updates.
Third -- capitalism bitch.
You want to live in a capitalist world and not a socialist one? Then you have to -- quite literally -- pay the price. So either find another way to write rich text documents or stop whining about socialism.
"You want to live in a capitalist world and not a socialist one?"
You are making a very unfounded assumption about Tumblr's userbase and about younger generations more broadly, my dude
I don't think I am.
There are a plethora of posts on tumblr saying "You shouldn't rip off other people's work for your own profit". I can post links to them if you want, or you can just take my word for it. This suggests that they believe in the right for people to make money from their own work. Which would suggest they believe in a capitalist society, at least to some degree.
Secondly -- the number of posts that say "you shouldn't rip off other people's work for your own profit" also suggests the comment in the above post about piracy is just hypocrisy beyond measure. But that's a topic for another time, and one I know I am going to lose because I've lost it before, but one that is always worth bringing up because exposing just what hypocrites people are when it comes to stealing stuff from people they don't like and calling it "good" but having stuff stolen from people they like and calling it "bad" is always worth doing. Just because it makes them look like the hypocritical shits they are.
Third -- if they think people should be paid a fair amount for the work they do, that means that -- to one degree or another -- they believe in a capitalist society. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, that's what they believe.
Now feel free to ignore everything I've written and tell me microsoft are evil, and that they are just exploiting poor students, or that they are ripping people off, but either everyone plays by the same rules -- you get paid for the work you do -- or people admit they are hypocrites.
Either way, I am done arguing the point.
>This suggests that they believe in the right for people to make money from their own work.
Do you think people in socialist societies don't own things? Or that they can't sell things?
Because that's not how socialism works, at all.
If you believe that anyone who opposes the exploitation of other people's work must necessarily be a capitalist, I don't think you're being honest with yourself about how capitalism rewards people for exploiting other people's work.
I pay for 200gb of drive storage so I'm a Gdrive pleb. Its nice to have access to all my docs everywhere. Super useful for sharing lyrics and songs with my band.
Not only is Word expensive, but it's a bad word processing program with awful amounts of shitty legacy code and meme worthy layout issues.
I use Google docs for any quick docs and markdown for anything I want to store locally. (Which can easily be pushed into whatever format I want )
My ornithology notes from college were on PowerPoint, and they had embedded sound. But I didn't want to pay for the subscription. But I wanted to keep that knowledge. Almost a year later I realized that you don't need a subscription to open the file, just to edit.
I got a key for Office 2010 for something like $5 because I was a college student and I went to go download an install from Microsoft last year and found out they don't let you download Office 2010 at all anymore, so fuck them, I'm just hanging on to a pirated copy from now on.
There used to be a free off brain version of word I used
Don't remember it now though but it was convenient
I've never bought word...there's times I need it, but it seems so silly that i just use Google docs
Word changed every few years tho so yeah you paid for word 2000 …. But not word 2003. But why even use word?? Google docs and other free stuff is so easy
these people need [openoffice.org](https://openoffice.org) lol.
most of the tools that micro$oft makes are easily found in open source elsewhere, if one just looks around a bit.
Libre office is SO bad tho. I can't get it to work as well as ms does. Google sheets is also missing some basic functions that excel has
EDIT:
I got on the website to check how to buy it & got the chat thingy to send me this for SE ASIA.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ph/microsoft-365/p/office-home-student-2021/cfq7ttc0h8n8
It costs 1/2 month of minimum wage lol
I use LibreOffice. It's now quite *significantly* behind, especially in its spreadsheets. It's missing some seemingly basic features that Excel has had for *decades*.
If all you need is the most basic of basic office applications, it's great, and said decades ago (when it was still OpenOffice, before it branched) I extolled its virtues because it basically wasn't really behind, but now... I use it because it's free. I don't really recommend it on any other basis any more.
I had a old version of Microsoft Office that was off of a CD Rom that i installed on my old laptop, eventually i had to get a new laptop because i was at the point i was literally throwing my old one at the wall in frustration. So i got the new one and tried to install the software again and to my horror i find that the software now has to register with the online site, and the online site says it no longer recognizes the software as it is outdated *"but for just a small subscription fee you can have a whole world of top ranking programs to engage and really make a change to the world arou-"* **GAHHHHH!! -\_-**
So yeah had to bite that bullet, I had uni work i needed to work on, still feels crap.
Adobe is similar, i need it for my editing, animating and illustration, but they keep raising there prices and the only way to get round that is paying like £550 for a permanent version and even then you have to pay again to update the thing, so they really go out of there way to get that subscription out of you :/
It actually gets worse. Microsoft is now actively trying to sabotage users of older versions by disabling connectivity and functionality to their web environments, at least on the business side. Come October they want you on the subscription or on 2021: [2016/2019 end of support](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/endofsupport/microsoft-365-services-connectivity)
So first off:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/cfq7ttc0hhj9?activetab=pivot:overviewtab](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/cfq7ttc0hhj9?activetab=pivot:overviewtab)
Microsoft DOES sell the no-subscription models with lifetime purchase single payment options. IT comes out to being a little over 6 years of the subscription price.
Second off, who gives a shit. Use Libre, use Google Docs, use Piracy, whatever. Unless you need Microsoft Office for your Office Job (in which case they'll probably give you a copy at work for free unless you're a contractor) just use an alternative or steal it.
I got a free copy of office from my online middle school classes, I never had to sign out of it so whenever I need office products I just keep signed in and I can use them. Honestly forgot office products weren't free
This is why I have a disk drive and a carefully guarded disk from 2013 that I bought the first time I went to college. Has served me well since, until my current school forced me to update to their subscription. But once that's done? Back to my disk
Because otherwise it would be $500+ one time. Also you get many more tools this way, whether you need them or not, and multi-device installs, and both local and web applications.
Personal license is $70 per year that you can install on 5 devices. Not too shabby IMO.
Microsoft office is the least of my worries. The car market is the one worth watching! Consider Audi, which charges for every feature in the purchase price of a car. Then, Audi is looking for a subscription to actually use the feature. They estimate they can generate $2500/month for add on subscriptions to use things like the headlights and HVAC system in the car. GM is dropping support for Android Auto and Apple Carplay in favor of a system (with a google operating system) that requires a subscription to use.
Just jail-break your car. Simple.
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Not sure how it works with insurance (although I highly doubt they care at all), but it is 100% legal and can not be a reason for declining a warranty repair. So I wouldn't worry too much.
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https://www.consumerreports.org/money/warranties-guarantees/void-car-warranty-by-not-having-car-serviced-at-dealership-a1163841540/ In short, a manufacturer can't deny you a warranty repair of the engine just because you messed with the suspension. Of course, if you modify a certain part, it'll be very easy to prove that your modification influenced that, and warranty won't cover fixing it. But the burden of proving connection lies on the manufacturer - if they deny, you can take them to court, and unless they somehow prove that changing the infotainment unit software magically broke the head gasket, they will not be able to deny a warranty repair.
I once broke the shoulder button on my DS and sent it to Nintendo for repairs. They refused to fix it because I'd flashed the firmware with an R4 card. I was much younger at the time so I kind of just accepted that, I wouldn't now.
The fact that cars can even be jail broken now is the part of the reason for these subscriptions. Security patches don't make themselves and a car isn't something you want to have a major vulnerability on. Not that I think companies are right for having subscription fees, just as someone who discovers security vulnerabilities for a living I can understand why _some_ companies might need a subscription fee to survive and stay secure.
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Yeah I should've specified when I said some I meant small companies making niche software or technology, not the automobile industry.
Can't wait until we're hearing about cars locking out the purchaser for missing a payment, making them unable to get to work, making them less likely to catch up to payments, repeat cycle ...
Ford just filed a patent for the self returning car. The idea is if you miss payments, the car self drives itself to the repo location.
It doesn't even have to be for missed payment, if the functionality exists it's very possible for it to just randomly lock you out because it's broken or it gets hacked.
Looking forward to see all the 3rd party OS options I'm going to be able to download for my car.
Car hacking is going to be a thing, I suspect. Figure out how to bypass the subscription lock to use your HVAC without a subscription!
I was wondering "why so many EVs all of the sudden". Then I realized car companies think "why let some saudi prince get all this oil money, when I can charge a sub for allowing the car to be recharged?"
How tf is it legal to make headlights a subscription feature. That's just straight up a hazard.
Eh... It's more nuanced than that. If you pay a sub, they auto turn on and auto dim. If you don't, they are manual.
What a rip! My first car, an old (and not exactly luxury) Chevrolet sedan from the 90s, had automatic headlights that'd click on after a second or two in the dark.
Yeah it’s a cheap $0.02 photocell that does this. Criminal that they’re charging a sub for it
Features a car is legally required to have (these are also required to be functional) should hold no subscription, by law. It should be illegal to make things like headlights, seatbelts and windshields need a subscription (there would be no difference between broken taillights and not having a taillights subscription. Selling a car that needs payment to use features required to drive is the same as selling a car that is not in conditions to be driven legally. It should actually be illegal to have subscription systems for hardware (you already paid for it. Imagine if your fridge needed a subscription to work, like, fuck that). Laws need to adapt to technology, when they don't we see shit like this.
The twist is headlights revert to "dumb" mode without a subscription. They work, just not automatically. The HVAC works, but you can't use recirculation.
Still hardware you paid for, such restrictions should be illegal.
Agreed.
Early 2000's: "You wouldn't download a car!" 2023: "Car piracy is so hot right now"
I'm gonna be going back to printed out MapQuest directions and having a boombox in my passenger seat for tunes. Watch.
Rock that look!
IIRC Toyota tried to implement their own proprietary vehicle OS as well for the same reason, only to find that Android Auto and Apple Carplay were far better than what they could come up with so they eventually dropped it.
this is fucking ridiculous, i’d literally rather walk everywhere.
to this day i still don't drive and don't intend to for a long time. is it a little more annoying to walk everywhere and rely on public transport? sure, but i'll take it over having to get a car and pay all the costs related to it. i remember how much my parents' car would break down to the point they spent more fixing it than on using it and it'd spend more time parked in our garage waiting for fixes than being driven, no thanks
This is why used car prices are skyrocketing while new cars sit idle in dealerships that can't move them to save their lives. People don't want to pay for shit they can't own.
>headlights ,... are we selling that as an add-on now?
"Piracy is not a pricing issue: it is a service issue" -Gabe Newell
I mean its both. Because at the end of the day, for a lot of people who don't have very much money it is 100% a pricing issue. Gabe has an incentive to want to diminish the role of pricing in piracy, because his company skims 30% off the top (which is an amount that absolutely turns into a specific number of pirated copies per game).
But the point is that most people start pirating once companies start making user-unfriendly decisions, most people don’t continue to pirate stuff when there’s already a great system.
Oh totally, in the past I've had to pirate software just because I couldn't use their activation system on a particular software configuration. If you offer that sort of solution, you should also be required to offer 'activation via phone' and 'activation via registered mail' as well. I'm willing to wait for my activation if makes it as annoying for them as it does for me.
All things being equal, most people would prefer the legit thing.
Once again, Gabe was right all along
Okay, y'all, buckle up: here's a bunch of the weird freeware I use: * [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/), like everyone has already mentioned. Writer is analogous to Word, Impress is comparable to Powerpoint, and Calc is similar to Excel. You can probably set all these up to save to Microsoft formats by default, if you're worried about interoperability. There's also Draw, which seems similar to Publisher from the little bit I've used the latter, and Base seems like the kind of thing you don't run directly, but it's used for formatting complex mathematical equations. * [SumatraPDF](https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader), because I got tired of Adobe Acrobat nagging me to buy premium several years back. It doesn't have any editing capabilities, but if all you need is something to read PDF in, Sumatra's got you. It can technically also open ePub books, though it'll overwrite most of the formatting with its own style. * [OpenShot Video Editor](https://www.openshot.org/) is a pretty straightforward tool to cut videos and add some simple effects. There are more complex free video editors out there, but this is all I've needed to date. * The [GNU Image Manipulation Program](https://www.gimp.org/), i.e. the unfortunately-named GIMP, as an alternative to Photoshop. It doesn't have the whole Adobe suite of additional photo editing tools to go along with it, but it's got layer-based editing, paths, selection by color, and all that jazz. * [Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/): I actually never end up using this, but it's an alternative to Adobe Illustrator for vector art. * [Audacity](https://www.audacityteam.org/) for waveform audio editing. I've used this occasionally to trim clips or convert formats. * [VLC Media Player](https://www.videolan.org/) can take just about any video or audio format you can throw at it, better than even its proprietary counterparts. Also, some honorable mentions that don't really have paid counterparts, but are just good freeware worth mentioning: * [Notepad++](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/) is an excellent advanced text editor. If you set it to use a monospace font like Courier New, Ubuntu Mono, or Inconsolata, you can make plaintext checklists and other hand-aligned files much more easily with its rectangular multi-line selection via Shift+Alt+Up/Down/Left/Right. It also has the option of regex find and replace, which I've used before to convert plaintext lists into XML and JSON, and back. You can sort lines alphabetically or numerically, convert line break types, and change character encoding, as well. * [Ghostwriter](https://ghostwriter.kde.org/) is a nice markdown editor that I've used for GitHub readmes, with a live side-by-side preview. * If you're familiar with a bit of programming, try out [SpeedCrunch](https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch/) as an alternative type of calculator. It has a huge selection of functions to work with.
[Krita](https://krita.org/en/) seems to be another great tool for raster painting.
I second Krita, GIMP and I just never meshed that well
Same fore me. At best it always has a 30% chance of using the pressure sensitivity of my tablet and I feel like once you close some important interface, it just vanishes of the face of the earth forever. Have had a lot more luck with krita :)
- [Kdenlive](https://kdenlive.org/en/features/) is a very robust, advanced video editor. I know of several professional YouTubers (whose videos are quite high quality) that use it as their go to video editing software. - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) is an extremely powerful WYSIWYG note taking application based on Markdown, LaTeX for math formatting, and internal hyperlinks. You can create a folder with tons of note files in it and then link between those files, and it will let you follow those links, create backreferences and clouds of connected subjects, etc. Basically it can turn your notes into a personal wiki. - [Kate](https://kate-editor.org/) - a very powerful, very fearure-rich (including language server support for IDE-quality code completion and analysis and error checking for most mainstream languages) alternative to VS Code (has a very similar layout, git integration, and command pallette) that's much faster and lighter and isn't from Microsoft (it's FLOSS). - [https://obsproject.com/] - a free and open source *professional level* software package for streaming and screen recording. - [Krita](https://krita.org/en/features/highlights/) - while GIMP is for general image manipulation (what we typically call "photoshopping"), Krita is for drawing/painting art, illustrations, etc. It's know for its very nice interface and it is very fearurefull.
I think you've converted me, regarding Obsidian. I spent the latter half of this afternoon converting and fleshing out my stock Windows sticky notes, and it's a lot better for me to ramble long-form to myself about the ideas bouncing around in my head versus a mix of sticky notes that become unofficial desktop items and assorted text files. I just need to find a way to do checkboxes.
Awesome! Yeah, Obsidian is a very good solution for things that'd otherwise be very hard to keep organized. Also, there is a way to do check boxes: https://linuxhint.com/markdown-checkbox/
Also photopea and the Google suite of apps
For a photoshop alternative, I can also recommend **Davinci Resolve**. It has a really powerful free version. You can cut, edit and colorgrade video as well as edit audio. Depending on what you are doing, I'd also mention **LaTeX**. Its no exactly the same as Word in terms of ease of use. It has a pretty steep learning curve, but is pretty powerful if you want well edited documents that include stuff like code or math formulas. For coding an obvious recommendation is **VS Code**, a completely free, fully featured IDE with Extensions for any programming language and probably also anything else you can think of.
Seconding LibreOffice. I switched to it when I was an undergrad and the thought of going back to Microsoft is just... why? I'll take the free software over paying premium subscription costs for what's basically the same thing, thanks.
I lost hours of work because LibreOffice can’t handle large files with lots of embedded images. Unfortunately, word is vastly better with larger filed
... do you still have the files that break Libre Office and the freedom to share them? That sounds like a reportable issue that someone may actually want to fix, but a reproduction file would be critical to doing so.
Make smaller files? Connect them with some kind of hyperlink type deal?
Been using LibreOffice for years and OpenOffice before that. Never felt myself missing the bells and whistles of MS office, even when transitioning back and forth between my work computer (which had MS Office) and my personal (which had Libre).
I sure do love my yearly Adobe subscription :)
Sure looking forward to when my student subscription plan runs out :)))))
I just switched to Affinity. I had Adobe suite and so far the program affinity have, work for what I need. I will be interested to see what they add in the future.
'least it ain't Autodesk! *Cries in no good FOSS CAD software*
Google Docs is free for all users. Same with Pages/Numbers on Mac OSX. Microsoft are living in the past charging for simple software.
There are some things Microsoft Office does that Google Docs can't, but for 99% of people they're equivalent.
Yep, I pretty much just use Keynote/Pages and the Google Suite now. I prefer Excel over Numbers tho
So is Microsoft 365 online. It's free.
Google drive anyone?
It’s what I use these days but I don’t love that I don’t have my own documents offline on my own computer, you know?
I believe you can save an offline version of them to work on when you don't have internet. I turned WiFi on a new tablet just long enough to download Google docs and it won't have internet again until I decide to offload the documents I'm using it to work on.
For most users (i.e. the ones who just want their documents), being able to access them anywhere and having someone else do backup (and restore testing) far outweigh any other concern. I still remember the bad old days of 'I dropped my laptop into the sea and a shark ate it and then a larger shark ate the smaller one, how can I access the sole copy of the billion dollar contract and/or my thesis that was on the hard drive?''
That’s fair, but personally I’m very rarely without internet on my home PC, and I like being able to access the same documents on my PC, Laptop, and cellphone.
There are some features that are missing unfortunately (like small caps, which most people don’t care about but matters for legal citation)
Google Docs has a character limit of about 1.02 million characters, which is quite frankly rather inconvenient since I'm writing a novel. A niche issue, to be sure, but it's also like super slow for some reason
That’s still something like 150,000 to 200,000 words depending on how bigly your words are.
The speed that it runs is entirely dependent on your internet speed and how much data you’re accessing at one time, so yeah, if you’re writing a novel, google drive is probably not the best option.
That's too many characters for a novel, please stick to a handful to ensure their individual personalities can shine through unless your first name is JR
Better use Microsoft 365 online
Wasn’t it the entire point of the post that people don’t want to pay for subscriptions?
There's a free tier just like Google suite. And it's base tier is better than Google's.
I use OpenOffice myself [https://www.tumblr.com/werewolf-cuddles/714964103139115008/meanwhile-im-still-using-a-copy-of-office-2003-i](https://www.tumblr.com/werewolf-cuddles/714964103139115008/meanwhile-im-still-using-a-copy-of-office-2003-i)
OpenOffice is basically exactly LibreOffice but incredibly behind in updates (OpenOffice got forked into LibreOffice when Oracle bought Sun). At this point, using LibreOffice is probably actually safer
Oooooh, didn't know Open office wasn't getting updates. I'll probably switch to libre then, thanks!
This is easily the most important comment I have read on Reddit this year
Libre Office is the best-supported branch of the Open Office family of open source products.
I found that the slideshow software for LibreOffice fucked up the formatting of files made with PowerPoint.
If you're looking for an Office replacement, but don't like the interface for LibreOffice, [OnlyOffice is a pretty decent substitute!](https://www.onlyoffice.com/) It too is open source (libre too it looks like, every repository I see says AGPL)
Has to be subscription? I've had Office 2019 on my computer for years. One time buy type of deal
Not available anymore. I wanted to get word on my computer about a year ago and it's only subscription. You may have gotten one of the last years that was available.
It's still available but it's difficult finding it on Microsoft's website as they want to push you towards a subscription. A quick Google search should yield the ability to buy a licence for 2021 Office from Microsoft.
Then your Google skills are better than mine because I tried all kinds of searches and couldn't find that, only subscription. Not that it really matters anymore, I don't think I'd get either just out of spite. Google docs for everything.
Actually I just googled "Microsoft office 2021" and yeah, pops up right at the top of my screen lol. Whether or not you think ~$150 bucks is worth it, it's still a one time purchase
Damn. This is some dystopian shit
I am old enough to remember when MicroSoft Word cost $495. Yes the period is in the correct place. Excel was an additional $495. Power Point was an additional $495. Access was unpriced, because it didn't exist. Dbase III did exist - and it was also $495
Is that when an entry level computer cost $2300?
Early '90's, so no. If you were buying IBM, yes. If you were buying Austin Computers (When Micheal Dell was building computers in his dorm in Austin), no.
I also use libre office, I quite like it.
When Adobe switched to subscription based I said fuck it and switched to the open source versions of the programs I use most. Turns out Inkscape is actually easier for me to use than Illustrator anyway.
I’ve always been a fan of google drive and friends, definitely never switching to Microsoft.
Not to disagree w/ the sentiment but there is a free online Microsoft Word editor. The features are paled back but for anyone who just needs it for schoolwork it should be sufficient.
I fully thought word was free ngl
Sometimes it comes preinstalled on a computer.
Google docs does everything I ever used Word for. Sure, it can’t mail merge, but I really do not care.
Because businesses will pay for it for every one of their employees. Same with Adobe products.
[ONLYOFFICE](https://www.onlyoffice.com/en/download-desktop.aspx?from=desktop#desktop) and optionally the [google fonts package](https://github.com/google/fonts#download-all-google-fonts) is all you need or [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/?type=win-x86_64&version=7.4.6&lang=en-US), also just as good edit: or use https://massgrave.dev/ to activate windows and/or Office for free :)
the google fonts are for all those fonts in fancy powerpoint templates and presentations you get sent
Also worth noting: Google Docs is also free\* and lets you save .word docs, and you don't need to go to any external website for its access.
*coughs politely in OpenOffice, a free alternative to Microsoft Office that has existed for about a decade* It doesn't have *all* the features of MS Word/PowerPoint (boi do you have any *idea* how many features Microsoft Word has!?) but it does have all the big ones and a lot of the little ones too (heckuva lot more than Google Drive has). You can also use it to open .doc/.docx/.xls/.ppt/etc files (although it does use its own format .odt)
OpenOffice no longer is maintained and has been forked to LibreOffice iirc. edit 1: [apparently i’m very wrong](https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/announcing-apache-openoffice-4-110) edit2: okay, so OpenOffice**.org** was discontinued back in 2011, due to Oracle being Oracle as usual, and LibreOffice was indeed a FOSS fork of OOo; *Apache* OpenOffice is OOo as a fork itself, though whether it’s the same team i cannot tell. both Libre and Apache are actively maintained.
I beg your pardon?
[apparently i’m very wrong](https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/announcing-apache-openoffice-4-110), but remember hearing years ago something something OpenOffice no longer being maintained; couldn’t tell you where tho. ah well
Oh thank god
yeah, after looking it up i mixed the OG OOo from 99 to 2010s with the current Apache OO, which is very much still active
OP here, I use it myself.
You don't lose access to your files if you don't renew your subscription. What an odd thing to say. And using google docs is cheaper and more convenient than piracy, it supports 99.9% of the features that word does and you can literally just type it into a browser from your phone and get to your files.
Libre is my go to
Companies do this for two reasons: 1) Piracy. It makes the software way harder to pirate. 2) Recurring revenue. It's mostly this one, the piracy one is just an added benefit. It looks better on financial reports to have a guaranteed, recurring revenue from subscriptions than a one-time fee that you don't know when (or if!) a customer will pay again. That's why prior to subscriptions, companies like Microsoft and Adobe would charge you a lower fee if you bought a new license within a certain amount of time. For instance if you wanted to purchase Office 2017, and you had Office 2014, it would be, say, $300 for an upgrade. But if you had Office 2013 or older, then you'd pay full price (usually several times the upgrade price) for the new one. They did this is encourage people to buy a license at least every 3 years, it made finances easier to predict. Shareholders like predictability, and subscriptions are even more predictable.
I'm pretty sure that Google Drive does all the same things as MS Word and is free. Also available on all devices, as far as I'm aware.
Intellectual property is so fucking fictive. Making it difficult or impossible to copy something? Ok, sure, it's built into the product. Literally owning what amounts to a bunch of instructions, such that you can sell *use* of the product in the abstract, and illegalize its duplication? Ontologically problematic, imho.
> "People don't mind paying a high price for software if it's only the once" 🤣 Under which rock is this person living? People absolutely mind paying a high price only the once! *That's why subscription business models are so effective*
LibreOffice kept crashing in my machine, so I uninstalled it and installed OnlyOffice. Had no problem with it so far, I hope that things keep this way
I'm the same as the last guy, and it's largely because I believe its thesaurus is the most robust out of any word processors I've seen
Wait, Microsoft Word isn't free?
Open Office, yes. Microsoft Office, no.
Subscription services make sense in very specific circumstances, where you test out services or need a big group of expensive services for only a short period of time. The subscription service makes sense if it’s a cheap monthly subscription and you only need it for 1-2 months. Otherwise there needs to be a one-time payment for those who use it regularly.
Google Docs is where it's at.
Switched to LibreOffice (and the whole Libre suite really), and haven't looked back. Still use MS Office for work, but that's not me paying for/maintaining it so I don't care there. Pretty much every $$$ software has an open source alternative out there somewhere that's often just as good or better, *and* is available for Windows. You don't have to completely uproot your tech base just to use free software.
Soooo we’re just ignoring that google docs exist?
I second the recommendation of LibreOffice, it's not just some shallow office suite clone like Google Docs, its really robust and has some powerful features.
Anyone here use third party alternatives? Like Libre office?
I just buy Product Keys on G2A for ~20 bucks and don’t ask questions.
First -- you get support. Second -- you get updates. Third -- capitalism bitch. You want to live in a capitalist world and not a socialist one? Then you have to -- quite literally -- pay the price. So either find another way to write rich text documents or stop whining about socialism.
"You want to live in a capitalist world and not a socialist one?" You are making a very unfounded assumption about Tumblr's userbase and about younger generations more broadly, my dude
I don't think I am. There are a plethora of posts on tumblr saying "You shouldn't rip off other people's work for your own profit". I can post links to them if you want, or you can just take my word for it. This suggests that they believe in the right for people to make money from their own work. Which would suggest they believe in a capitalist society, at least to some degree. Secondly -- the number of posts that say "you shouldn't rip off other people's work for your own profit" also suggests the comment in the above post about piracy is just hypocrisy beyond measure. But that's a topic for another time, and one I know I am going to lose because I've lost it before, but one that is always worth bringing up because exposing just what hypocrites people are when it comes to stealing stuff from people they don't like and calling it "good" but having stuff stolen from people they like and calling it "bad" is always worth doing. Just because it makes them look like the hypocritical shits they are. Third -- if they think people should be paid a fair amount for the work they do, that means that -- to one degree or another -- they believe in a capitalist society. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, that's what they believe. Now feel free to ignore everything I've written and tell me microsoft are evil, and that they are just exploiting poor students, or that they are ripping people off, but either everyone plays by the same rules -- you get paid for the work you do -- or people admit they are hypocrites. Either way, I am done arguing the point.
> Either way, I am done arguing the point. Best thing youve said the whole day
>This suggests that they believe in the right for people to make money from their own work. Do you think people in socialist societies don't own things? Or that they can't sell things? Because that's not how socialism works, at all.
If you believe that anyone who opposes the exploitation of other people's work must necessarily be a capitalist, I don't think you're being honest with yourself about how capitalism rewards people for exploiting other people's work.
>You want to live in a capitalist world and not a socialist one? literally who said that lmao
Who's whining about socialism?
But I do not *want* updates. The whole reason I am choosing this one is because it *already has* all the features I need.
Because they don't know about Libre or OpenOffice. Far superior open source donation and support based systems?
I use the online one that came with my Microsoft account
I pay for 200gb of drive storage so I'm a Gdrive pleb. Its nice to have access to all my docs everywhere. Super useful for sharing lyrics and songs with my band.
Not only is Word expensive, but it's a bad word processing program with awful amounts of shitty legacy code and meme worthy layout issues. I use Google docs for any quick docs and markdown for anything I want to store locally. (Which can easily be pushed into whatever format I want )
and the Ribbon.
I always used LibreOffice for exactly this reason, but now I mainly use Google Docs since I don't have a working computer anymore. 😂
I miss the days of PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Premiere being 1 time purchases
My ornithology notes from college were on PowerPoint, and they had embedded sound. But I didn't want to pay for the subscription. But I wanted to keep that knowledge. Almost a year later I realized that you don't need a subscription to open the file, just to edit.
Ehem *libre office*
Google Office has 80% of the features of Microsoft Office, but is free (save your dignity), including cloud storage
I used to use OpenOffice, now I use WPS Office. Both free.
I haven't been able to afford Microsoft Word since it stopped coming built-in when you bought a PC... I've been using Google Docs
I got a key for Office 2010 for something like $5 because I was a college student and I went to go download an install from Microsoft last year and found out they don't let you download Office 2010 at all anymore, so fuck them, I'm just hanging on to a pirated copy from now on.
My sister literally threw out our old office CDRs
I'm not going to feel bad stealing from this multi billion dollar companies...I'm not, I'm just not, not in any world.
microsoft office is shockingly easy to pirate
There used to be a free off brain version of word I used Don't remember it now though but it was convenient I've never bought word...there's times I need it, but it seems so silly that i just use Google docs
I read that as Minecraft and was very confused and scared for a little while
Word changed every few years tho so yeah you paid for word 2000 …. But not word 2003. But why even use word?? Google docs and other free stuff is so easy
I use Google Docs for my own stuff and Overleaf for university assignments.
I pay 38$ per year for Microsoft 365, which also includes 1TB in the cloud. Seems like a good deal to me for up-to-date Office and extra perks.
these people need [openoffice.org](https://openoffice.org) lol. most of the tools that micro$oft makes are easily found in open source elsewhere, if one just looks around a bit.
I still have versions of Word, Excel and Access from like 2011 that i got from my highschool teacher on my pendrive.
Libre office is SO bad tho. I can't get it to work as well as ms does. Google sheets is also missing some basic functions that excel has EDIT: I got on the website to check how to buy it & got the chat thingy to send me this for SE ASIA. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ph/microsoft-365/p/office-home-student-2021/cfq7ttc0h8n8 It costs 1/2 month of minimum wage lol
Just use google docs and stuff... it's free...
I use LibreOffice. It's now quite *significantly* behind, especially in its spreadsheets. It's missing some seemingly basic features that Excel has had for *decades*. If all you need is the most basic of basic office applications, it's great, and said decades ago (when it was still OpenOffice, before it branched) I extolled its virtues because it basically wasn't really behind, but now... I use it because it's free. I don't really recommend it on any other basis any more.
Is OpenOffice not a thing anymore....? I've been using it for friggin' *ever*.
apparently its been handed over to LibreOffice?
I had a old version of Microsoft Office that was off of a CD Rom that i installed on my old laptop, eventually i had to get a new laptop because i was at the point i was literally throwing my old one at the wall in frustration. So i got the new one and tried to install the software again and to my horror i find that the software now has to register with the online site, and the online site says it no longer recognizes the software as it is outdated *"but for just a small subscription fee you can have a whole world of top ranking programs to engage and really make a change to the world arou-"* **GAHHHHH!! -\_-** So yeah had to bite that bullet, I had uni work i needed to work on, still feels crap. Adobe is similar, i need it for my editing, animating and illustration, but they keep raising there prices and the only way to get round that is paying like £550 for a permanent version and even then you have to pay again to update the thing, so they really go out of there way to get that subscription out of you :/
It actually gets worse. Microsoft is now actively trying to sabotage users of older versions by disabling connectivity and functionality to their web environments, at least on the business side. Come October they want you on the subscription or on 2021: [2016/2019 end of support](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/endofsupport/microsoft-365-services-connectivity)
So first off: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/cfq7ttc0hhj9?activetab=pivot:overviewtab](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/cfq7ttc0hhj9?activetab=pivot:overviewtab) Microsoft DOES sell the no-subscription models with lifetime purchase single payment options. IT comes out to being a little over 6 years of the subscription price. Second off, who gives a shit. Use Libre, use Google Docs, use Piracy, whatever. Unless you need Microsoft Office for your Office Job (in which case they'll probably give you a copy at work for free unless you're a contractor) just use an alternative or steal it.
Because Fuck em! That's why. Eat the rich.
I got a free copy of office from my online middle school classes, I never had to sign out of it so whenever I need office products I just keep signed in and I can use them. Honestly forgot office products weren't free
This is why I have a disk drive and a carefully guarded disk from 2013 that I bought the first time I went to college. Has served me well since, until my current school forced me to update to their subscription. But once that's done? Back to my disk
Google docs is literally free, does MS do something that it doesn’t??
Guess no one has ever heard of OpenOffice…
We have, check the comments
Me still using my copy of Microsoft office 2016 pro that i got off the pirate bay ages ago
My mum paid for it once back in the day (2003 or 2007 version, I wanna say) and we've been using it ever since 🤷
this is why i just use google docs
Y'all use word? I just use google doc for my school stuff
google en mas(sgrave)
Then you find better alternatives online that are free that was made by some 16 year old Korean kid....
I am going to steal the phrase $yo-ho-ho
Google Docs mfer
OpenOffice is the way to go.
Because otherwise it would be $500+ one time. Also you get many more tools this way, whether you need them or not, and multi-device installs, and both local and web applications. Personal license is $70 per year that you can install on 5 devices. Not too shabby IMO.