No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

[Kenrou]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/02/no_windows_10_no_office_2019_says_microsoft/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16960640/microsoft-office-2019-windows-10-support

"Microsoft’s revealed that Office 2019’s desktop applications will only run on Windows 10 and shorted support for the forthcoming release of the suite."

"Another change Microsoft’s made is making Office 365 ProPlus, the business-oriented version of the service, available only on Windows 10’s semi-annual channel. As of January 14, 2020, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016 or older and Windows 10 LTSC releases won’t run ProPlus. Nor will unsupported Windows 10 semi-annual releases."

 

[Alaric]

I have free software with more compatibility and long term support than Windows. LOL I wonder where the tipping point is. At some point, it won't be one thing, but the accumulation of annoying decisions, that will cause notable market share to say screw it and walk away from M$. I'm honestly surprised they walked away from the Windows 10 thing relatively unscathed-if you don't count Windows 7 being the most widely used OS in the world. LOL

 

[Kenrou]

Yes to be fair i haven't used Office in over 10 years, OpenOffice and more recently LibreOffice have done the trick more then well enough for my needs. But i assume this might cause problems for companies ?

 

[mackerel]

I'm not sure businesses sticking to Win7 will be bothered about not upgrading Office either. If whatever the latest supported version works, why change it? Businesses don't generally want to be cutting edge, let others work out the bugs. They'll switch to Win10/2019 much later. Looks like they have a couple years to work it out.

 

[wagex]

Yes to be fair i haven't used Office in over 10 years, OpenOffice and more recently LibreOffice have done the trick more then well enough for my needs. But i assume this might cause problems for companies ?

yeah right, my company is still on office 2003

 

[Pinky]

Yes to be fair i haven't used Office in over 10 years, OpenOffice and more recently LibreOffice have done the trick more then well enough for my needs. But i assume this might cause problems for companies ?

Mostly (employee) training, familiarity, and occasional compatibility issues between the open versions of Office and M$'s product. Having Outlook is another plus, not entirely sure why neither OpenOffice or Libre don't have an integrated email client.

I'm not sure businesses sticking to Win7 will be bothered about not upgrading Office either. If whatever the latest supported version works, why change it? Businesses don't generally want to be cutting edge, let others work out the bugs. They'll switch to Win10/2019 much later. Looks like they have a couple years to work it out.

Yup - The classic "If it aint broke, don't fix it." Unless you're a large, greedy company - in which case, "tinker until you lose market share."

 

[trents]

LibreOffice/OpenOffice do not include an email client. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why anyone, even businesses, still use clients. Web mail services like gmail have become so full-featured anymore I just don't see a need for a client.

 

[mackerel]

I use both web and local clients. The biggest problem with web clients is the lack of customisability. You pretty much get what you're given with little scope to change it. Gmail is tolerable, but MS' whatever they call it now I find almost unusable for any productivity other than light reading.

 

[Pinky]

Web mail services like gmail have become so full-featured anymore I just don't see a need for a client.

Our only large gmail using business [which we did not initially sell them GMail as a solution] has been hacked/compromised a dozen times in less than 2 years. They've had to buy a third party spam service due to GMail's inadequate built-in solution. GMail is absolutely horrible. You can't even enforce strong passwords. A quick google search will reveal the issues happening today were happening 7-8 years ago, AND GMAIL STILL HASN'T PLUGGED ANY OF THE HOLES.

In comparison, the remainder of our clients use some variant of hosted exchange (including Office 365). A couple out of all those other email accounts have clicked links for crypto and gotten infected. And zero cases of email account hijacking (the most common attack on the GMail platform). I'm not saying Exchange is the only way to go, but it sure beats the hell out of a budget solution like Gmail for business.

Also, from a functionality standpoint there's a lot more to Outlook than reading/composing emails.

I think if the open source office solutions had an email client they would be seriously considered.

 

[wagex]

LibreOffice/OpenOffice do not include an email client. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why anyone, even businesses, still use clients. Web mail services like gmail have become so full-featured anymore I just don't see a need for a client.

we switched to mozilla thunderbird from outlook 2003 it gets the job done just as well and has all the same feature for free. ive not seen a web based email client that works as good as a standalone email client, especially for people who send and receive emails throughout the workday.

 

[Pinky]

we switched to mozilla thunderbird from outlook 2003 it gets the job done just as well and has all the same feature for free. ive not seen a web based email client that works as good as a standalone email client, especially for people who send and receive emails throughout the workday.

It's fine though for most home end users. There really isn't a true, perfect email client. Most software decisions are a compromise. We wish Thunderbird worked for everything we (and our clients) needed, but in our limited testing it fell short.

 

[wagex]

It's fine though for most home end users. There really isn't a true, perfect email client. Most software decisions are a compromise. We wish Thunderbird worked for everything we (and our clients) needed, but in our limited testing it fell short.

what was it lacking for you guys? we use it in a business setting, it does everything outlook does at least what we used it for. what solution did you guys go with?

 

[Pinky]

what was it lacking for you guys? we use it in a business setting, it does everything outlook does at least what we used it for. what solution did you guys go with?

It was 18+ months ago and I didn't keep a checklist. I believe some of the calendar and contacts functionality/compatibility, as well as an issue with IMAP possibly [only occasionally used, most of our clients use Exchange].

We do support for many SMB clients in many industries, so products we use across the board tend to be very well stress tested or quickly dropped for something else if not up to speed/buggy. In general we find Outlook is the best at handling all email, calendar, contacts, and resource management. Since most of those clients tend to also use Exchange it makes sense Outlook would be our client of choice. It's not perfect either, but that's mostly due to Micro$oft deploying crappy patches that they end up retracting or repatching days/weeks later. Since we don't push updates as they immediately become available we skirt most of those problems.

Our TB test was more to explore alternatives than it was an intent to actually replace Outlook near/long term. 99% of our clients use Office Home and Business or Pro anyway, so they already have Outlook. If it came down to paying additional for Outlook we might be more motivated to spend time researching alternatives. We can't help but to be curious about what's oput there though.

 

[habbajabba]

Even window's calculator now is only available on their ap store. One more reason to go directly from 7 to linux even if it requires hardware changes.