Cloud-based subscription service for Office 365 Home Premium offers good
value and convenience
Microsoft has been dishing out various flavors of Office 2013 since November
2012, when enterprises with volume license plans got first access to the
finished software. In mid-January, employees at those companies could buy a
discounted copy as part of Microsoft's Home Use Program. And Microsoft recently
took the wraps off Office 365 Home Premium, which we took a look at.
Office 2013 is available at retail at prices ranging from $139 to $399 for use
on a single PC. But Microsoft's pricing model, which allows users to install
Office 365 Home Premium on a total of five PCs, Macs or Windows tablets for
$8.34 per month or $99.99 a year, is clearly geared toward getting individuals
and businesses to adopt Office 365 services. (Watch a slideshow version of this
story.)
Office 365 Home Premium includes downloadable versions of Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher. And, in addition to the
five PCs, apps can be temporarily streamed to other devices on demand or you're
able to do light editing with Web App versions of the software - both options
don't count against your license tally.
Office 2013: Everything IT needs to know
The math works out like this: If you're part of a large family or an independent
business person with multiple systems, Office 365 could save you decent money
compared to the minimum $139 cost (Home and Student) of buying the software for
each computer; further, at that price, you don't get Outlook, Access and
Publisher. And to make subscriptions more enticing, Office 365 Home Premium
includes 20GB of SkyDrive online storage and 60 minutes a month of Skype
international calling (together valued at about $160 per year).
And now some of the nuts and bolts. Office 365 Home Premium is technically a
cloud service. You sign in to Office.com to manage your subscription, and
documents are stored in SkyDrive by default. But the Office applications are
still installed on your PC. The point Microsoft emphasizes is that the latest
Office 2013 version will automatically download when you're online - and the
company is committed to a quarterly cycle of bug fixes and enhancements. Put
another way, no more manually installing fixes, security patches and service
packs - and reduced wait time for new features.
Easy to manage, easy to use
Getting started with Office 365 Home Premium is simple. I visited the setup
website, entered my product key, logged in, and selected the option to install
the software. After about 20 minutes, the full Office 2013 suite had downloaded
and was ready to use.
The My Account page lets you install Office on additional systems, deactivate a
computer, and perform other tasks, such as activating your Skype World minutes.
It's probably no surprise, but Office requires Windows 7, Windows 8, or Mac OS X
version 10.5.8 or higher. Microsoft previously released Office for Windows Phone
8 (preinstalled on Windows Phone 8 handsets). However, the company is not
talking about any plans for native Office apps on Apple iOS or Android.
Even so, I had good results editing Word docs and PowerPoint presentations on a
third-generation iPad using the Web apps through Google Chrome browser.
Significantly, when you use Office - whether on a Windows PC, tablet or phone -
formatting and styles remain intact between devices. I found documents retain
their fidelity across hardware. Moreover, my default settings (such as fonts)
were maintained no matter which system I used for editing.
Your main My Office page also serves as portal into your documents stored on
SkyDrive. From here you also launch Office on Demand (Microsoft's Click-2-Run
technology) - a process that takes less than five minutes to download and
install one application, such as Word. This could be valuable if you need to use
a PC that doesn't have Office installed. When you're done, just close the
application and it's removed from the PC. Also notable, this process does not
disturb any installed earlier versions of Office, such as 2010.
Sleek and simple design
Microsoft has been very aggressive in showcasing Office through various preview
versions, so there weren't any real surprises with the shipping of Office 2013
applications - mainly a few cosmetics to improve usability. Still, it's worth
recapping some of the major changes from Office 2010 and prior. Office 365 was
made for Windows 8, and I tested Home Premium on a variety of desktop and
laptops (both touch and non-touch) running Windows 8 Professional and
Enterprise. Office 365 has the same beautiful design that's clean and user
focused - devoid of extraneous animations and screen clutter.
When run in tablet mode, applications have larger touch points and more
streamlined ribbon menus that free screen real estate and improve usability.
One of the more valuable new features of Microsoft Word 2013, I feel, is the
ability to edit PDF documents; Word makes content (such as paragraphs, lists and
tables) act like Word documents. Read mode automatically reflows text into
columns to fit the screen, which is great for small screens. I also found
tap-and-zoom features helpful to enlarge tables and images within documents; you
can also expand and collapse sections, which makes working with large documents
easier.
Besides one place to store documents, I quickly found SkyDrive improves
collaboration. For example, I provided colleagues with a link to one document
and we could all contribute edits. Although Microsoft promotes this feature as
useful for family members working on personal documents, such as a vacation
agenda, there's potential for sharing work documents. This feature seems a bit
behind Google Docs, which permits live simultaneous editing by multiple people.
In the case of Word, you have to save your document before you can see edits by
others - but that's a slight inconvenience given the superior formatting and
other features of Word.
The revamped Excel does a better job learning your data entry patterns and auto
completing the remaining information. Then, Excel suggests PivotTables for the
best way to summarize your data. Additionally, I appreciated the way Excel
recommends the best charts based on patterns in your data.
PowerPoint Presenter View was one of the first features Microsoft demonstrated
last summer, and it continues to be one of the most valuable additions. When
working with a second screen (such as a projector) this behind-the-scenes tool
let me see upcoming slides and notes, while my audience viewed the actual
presentation.
And co-authoring is possible with PowerPoint, just like Word. I worked on a
presentation with the desktop Office software while a colleague made changes
through the PowerPoint Web app in a browser - and the formatting of the final
was perfect.
Access isn't typically given a lot of credit, but it delivers some impressive
ways to organize your life and business. Access 2013 opens existing desktop
databases (ACCDB and legacy MDB files). When creating new databases, Access
handles the complexities of building fields, rules, and relationships. The one
disadvantage of Home Premium is that you can't host your databases online; for
that, you need Office 365 Enterprise, where the databases are published to
SharePoint Online. For that reason, a product such as FileMaker would be more
appropriate for putting personal-type databases on the web.
Apps to Go
It seems no cloud solution is complete without a supporting ecosystem. And much
like Windows 8 has an App Store, Office 365 features an Office Store, which you
access through your Office.com account. Once you select an app from the store,
it's quickly loaded into the supported Office product through its ribbon bar.
There's a smattering of Apps for Office right now, most of them free, and the
majority generally useful. For instance, the free Merriam-Webster dictionary
works in Word, Excel and Outlook. But, like any store, some offerings have
limited value. LegalZoom, for instance, only directs you to their web site,
where you have to purchase one of their services.
With Windows 8, Microsoft proved it's willing to take big risks - from extensive
user interface changes to architecting the product for multiple form factors.
The same bold moves are apparent with Office 365. The applications in this
suite, already among the best in class, now operate easier and have some
productivity improvements.
Microsoft is clearly no novice to cloud computing - with years of experience in
e-mail (now Outlook.com) and Office 365 for business. The fundamental question
is if consumers are ready (and are willing to pay) for the next leap and
subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium.
In Microsoft's view, the economic equation adds up to an easy choice, especially
if you want the latest software and have multiple devices. And I generally
agree. The company says it's committed to rapid updates and feature enhancements
- and has invested heavily in sophisticated systems to track bugs and help with
rapid development. In itself, that's representative of the new thinking that's
been happening within Microsoft for a while.
But for those with one or two PCs and who don't need the latest features - and
that may be a large audience - these potential buyers may be satisfied with
older Office software, or Google Docs and other free alternatives. There's also
pressure from Box, Dropbox and similar cloud storage vendors. As a result,
Microsoft's success with Office 365 Home Premium is not a given, but the company
will likely get a good number of users switching to subscriptions.
