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Microsoft revokes Office 2019 perpetual licenses, then edits their website to gaslight customers.

Funny detail I noticed on the wife's laptop a few years ago, a few months after skype got killed: removing skype from an office 2019 install is not supported.

Pretty annoying, since she has to keep it installed for the few times per year she needs to check document compatibility.
 
I'm saying they're not supposed to do it like the shanking in an alley, way
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That guy is great! He gives son of an in Italian mafia boss vibes.

It's Micro$haft. They've been screwing people over for decades. You don't have to manufacture outrage, because the crap they pull is outrageous. I expect nothing less from them. They have monopolies. They don't care.
In the process of completely purging myself of Windows/Office, at home, and moving to Linux.
 
bigdogchris said:
This issue only applies to Office 2019 for Mac. Windows versions are not affected.

Also, the first rule of Massgrave is you don't talk about Massgrave.
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Still shady as hell but yeah I dont use it anymore.

Not worried about talking about Massgrave, Microsoft obviously doesn't give a shit about it.
 
bigdogchris said:
You'd think companies would not allow you to host piracy tools for their software on their own platform :ROFLMAO: I guess as long as the end user is the product they don't care.
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Right! I think MG is sourced on github or something like that. They really dont care.
 
HockeyJon said:
LibreOffice is free.
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Companies tend to avoid opensource software as far as I can tell. When we had issues with Excel I told them I could fix it in 20 minutes for every computer in our factory if they would give me temporary admin rights, just to get things going again smoothly but no. Probably some liability thing, I dunno. No open source even for backup purposes whenever our software get messed up yet again by a dodgy update from our IT department in Sweden... 🙄
 
It's that little bit on that TOS that everyone who buys the software is forced to agree to that says something to the effect of "Microsoft reserves the right to revoke this license at any time..."
 
MaZa said:
Companies tend to avoid opensource software as far as I can tell. When we had issues with Excel I told them I could fix it in 20 minutes for every computer in our factory if they would give me temporary admin rights, just to get things going again smoothly but no. Probably some liability thing, I dunno. No open source even for backup purposes whenever our software get messed up yet again by a dodgy update from our IT department in Sweden... 🙄
Click to expand...

You have to remember how decisions are made with corporations when it comes to things like software. Most of this is blame-management, full stop. Your manager doesn't want you doing it because if something goes wrong, it's an internal problem, and he/she gets held to account for it. If the contractor or Microsoft screws up, well that's an external thing, and your manager's in the clear because he/she "hired the certified expert". It's the same reason companies hire consultants for things they should know how to do themselves. If something goes wrong, you blame the consultant. If it goes well, you're the genius who hired the right consultant. Win-win.

It's the same reason I think the SaaS-pocalypse is a bit overblown. Can you imagine trying to stand in front of your board of directors after a major problem occurs and explain to them how you vibe-coded the corporate software? Guess how fired you are?

In any case, fortunately I'm not a corporation, so Microsoft Office 365 can lick me. I just need spreadsheets for doing my taxes or whatever, anyway, and LibreCalc works fine.
 
HockeyJon said:
LibreOffice is free.
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In the past I would have said something about it being a poor substitute from a functionality perspective, especially when needing to collaborate with people on documents created in Microsoft Office, but in the last couple of years it has really improved a lot. I have opened word documents and they have looked exactly the same as if opened in MS Word. That is quite a huge improvement.

For my home needs, all of the components of LibreOffice are more than sufficient. At work we use the "track changes" and "comment" features in Word a lot though, and I haven't tested how well those interact between current LibreOffice and Ms Office.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
In the past I would have said something about it being a poor substitute from a functionality perspective, especially when needing to collaborate with people on documents created in Microsoft Office, but in the last couple of years it has really improved a lot. I have opened word documents and they have looked exactly the same as if opened in MS Word. That is quite a huge improvement.

For my home needs, all of the components of LibreOffice are more than sufficient. At work we use the "track changes" and "comment" features in Word a lot though, and I haven't tested how well those interact between current LibreOffice and Ms Office.
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MS Word is a garbage word processor in so many ways (try inserting and moving an image, it's like trying to box with your computer as you futilely attempt to position it where you want it to go), and it now comes with a monthly subscription. Terrible.

LibreOffice does everything I need for home use. There's really no need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for what I want to do. Corporate might be different, but not for personal use, at least not in my case.
 
HockeyJon said:
MS Word is a garbage word processor in so many ways (try inserting and moving an image, it's like trying to box with your computer as you futilely attempt to position it where you want it to go), and it now comes with a monthly subscription. Terrible.
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This was accurate 20 years ago, but hasn't been the case in a very long time.

I'm forced to daily Word for work (against my will) and have not seen this problem literally in decades.


HockeyJon said:
LibreOffice does everything I need for home use. There's really no need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for what I want to do. Corporate might be different, but not for personal use, at least not in my case.
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Same for me. All of my home stuff is fine in LibreOffice. The only thing I can see potentially causing problems at work is the markup features because I don't know how well they are integrated with LibreOffice.
 
Curious if this is baked in already or it will update at some point to do it, I deleted the autoupdater.app on mine I guess I'll find out lol. TBH for $3 more a month I could lose teams and get an office license though I'd have to see when my term ends.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
This was accurate 20 years ago, but hasn't been the case in a very long time.

I'm forced to daily Word for work (against my will) and have not seen this problem literally in decades.
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Thanks for the correction on that. I haven't used Word in quite a while to be fair, my work is essentially limited to Excel (which is great), and PowerPoint (which everyone has to use because, yay slideshows!). Glad to hear they fixed that stupidity. It was something that drove me insane back in the day lol.
 
1780413072882.png

*cough* Massgrave / KMS_AIO
 
The whole download a car mentality hasn't aged well.
I mean today's cars are all the same and if you want options you have to unlock them.
So you know where that is going.
I'm old and prefer knobs, dials, and even distributors and rotors. And definitely a five or six speed manual.
If I wanted to drive a computer I'd fire up need for speed in the comfort of my home.

The biggest thing I don't get are these places selling (software) keys for cheap.

It's been about 15 years now since I had a tech net sub. The scofflaws ruined that by selling legit keys through the usual channels.

In the end, we've become grave diggers. ;-)
 
HockeyJon said:
Thanks for the correction on that. I haven't used Word in quite a while to be fair, my work is essentially limited to Excel (which is great), and PowerPoint (which everyone has to use because, yay slideshows!). Glad to hear they fixed that stupidity. It was something that drove me insane back in the day lol.
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Same, I remember having lab reports in high school blow up on me due to shit like this.

Luckily in the last decade or two it has become rather rare of an occurrence, if it even happens at all anymore.
 
techie81 said:
If you use Excel in anyway close to a professional or serious manner, libre office or any of the other free option is not going to work.
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Onlyoffice is the closest. They even copied the layout and shortcuts so users can find their way quickly
 
techie81 said:
If you use Excel in anyway close to a professional or serious manner, libre office or any of the other free option is not going to work.
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What features do you find that you miss?

I have yet to find a formula that doesn't work the same way in LibreOffice as in Excel.

The charts look a bit different, and I tend to prefer the Excel look, but that isnt really a big deal.

Even solver and goal seek equivalents exist.

I've never tried messing with pivot tables in LibreOffice so I don't know how well they work, but if I am completely honest, I don't use those much in Excel either.

I believe LibeOffice used to have a smaller number of max rows for large datasets than Excel did, but I vaguely remember this being updated in LibreOffice in the last couple of years some tome too, if I am not mistaken.

Verado said:
Onlyoffice is the closest. They even copied the layout and shortcuts so users can find their way quickly
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LibreOffice DOES look a little different compared to Excel but that isn't necessarily bad from my perspective. I still almost 20 years later consider the transition from traditional menus to Microsofts "Ribbon interface" to be one of the worst examples of bad UI design on a high profile project of all time.

I'd probably avoid anything that makes it more like Excel IMHO. It's already bad enough that it is that they have tried to copy some of Microsoft's ribbon interface nonsense.

I'll say it a million times. Menus with words beat little pictures 100% of the time. The pictures are ambiguous. Words aren't. It may save some money on translation, but in the end it results in a worse product.

The biggest thing you can do under Linux to make cross-compatibility with Windows users better is to snag the Microsoft TTF's from a Windows box you have a license to. Otherwise when a word document is opened in LibreOffice it will use the wrong fonts and things might look weird.
 
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techie81 said:
If you use Excel in anyway close to a professional or serious manner, libre office or any of the other free option is not going to work.
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Hardly true.
The biggest reason to use Libre is that its open source. If you WANT a feature request it. If you find a bug report it. Having said that Libre is always evolving and adding new things. They are aware of most of the features they lack such as dynamic arrays. They are aware of the features they have which are superior such as being able to compare two sheets or add hyphenation in a text cell. Libre will be better next week then it is right now, and it will be better in 6 months then it was next month. Does anyone really believe that will be no doubt true of the MS product?

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office
This is a pretty honest break down of major and minor feature differences. If its listed on here they are working on ways to incorporate or better those features. Granted some may still take years to add. It is an open source project, and not exactly the sexist of projects for people to donate time to.

It isn't fair to say Libre is unprofessional grade software, in fact that is just way off base. MS does for sure have a handful of interesting unique features that in same cases make it the obvious better choice, MS bull shittery aside. For many many cases though Libre ticks all the boxes, just works and may even have some superior features if you know they are present at least. Same goes for extensions. Libre has 100s of extensions, and companies CAN extend libre themselves. I wouldn't say a software that can be extended in house is unprofessional.
 
ChadD said:
Hardly true.
The biggest reason to use Libre is that its open source. If you WANT a feature request it. If you find a bug report it. Having said that Libre is always evolving and adding new things. They are aware of most of the features they lack such as dynamic arrays. They are aware of the features they have which are superior such as being able to compare two sheets or add hyphenation in a text cell. Libre will be better next week then it is right now, and it will be better in 6 months then it was next month. Does anyone really believe that will be no doubt true of the MS product?

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office
This is a pretty honest break down of major and minor feature differences. If its listed on here they are working on ways to incorporate or better those features. Granted some may still take years to add. It is an open source project, and not exactly the sexist of projects for people to donate time to.

It isn't fair to say Libre is unprofessional grade software, in fact that is just way off base. MS does for sure have a handful of interesting unique features that in same cases make it the obvious better choice, MS bull shittery aside. For many many cases though Libre ticks all the boxes, just works and may even have some superior features if you know they are present at least. Same goes for extensions. Libre has 100s of extensions, and companies CAN extend libre themselves. I wouldn't say a software that can be extended in house is unprofessional.
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If that was true then big corporations would be using it, but they aren't. Sorry its not even close.
 
techie81 said:
If that was true then big corporations would be using it, but they aren't. Sorry its not even close.
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There are many companies using Libre. Nike, Hitachi, Lockhead Martin, BASF, Pfizer, AMD, IBM.

All of those companies are known to have large Libre install bases. Do they also use MS office for some uses? Sure probably. They aren't open source warriors they are corporations. Do you really think every corporation in the world is paying for a office 365 sub for every employee? OR buying site licenses. Most companies don't advertise their use of open source tools.
Then of course you can get into all the governmental use. Half a million PCs in the French gov, Italy's ministry of defense. Many Asian govs have major Libre installs.

Yes lots of business use Libre. Of course MS office is still popular. Many corporations continue to pay for licenses for public facing stuff. Many others wouldn't go without the support contracts. To support open source you have to engage smaller companies that do that or hire people. MS office is what it is, it is in bedded in industry right now. Its not going away tomorrow unless MS does something insane. Still there are plenty of companies using Libre. Libre has over 200m users worldwide, the majority of those are gov and businesses and not even Linux users. ;)

Also keep in mind many companies such as Dell looking for purchased support use collabora not Libra.
 
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