Just as Windows 10 is the most used operating system, Office is the office suite par excellence. This suite has been with us for decades (specifically since 1989) and its programs, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, have become a must-have for most users. However, Microsoft‘s office suite is paid, and it is not exactly a cheap suite. Therefore, if you are thinking of buying a license for the current version 2019, or for the next Office 2021, you should still consider it twice before checking out.
When we buy a license for Office 2016, 2019 or whatever version, it will allow us to use that version of the office suite forever. However, the Office versions have a limited life, and, after spending 150 euros (the cheapest edition) in the 2019 version (the 2021 will go up in price), in a few years we will run out of updates or support.
It is true that there may be situations in which we have no choice but to pay for this license. For example, if we do not mind not being up to date, and we are only going to use Office on our personal PC, without sharing it with anyone (or other family members) or on mobile phones or tablets, then we may have to pay for the license of one time, in the long run, save us money.
But in this way we will be losing functions and services (such as OneDrive) that add value to the suite. Therefore, before buying this license, we must consider several things.
Better Office 365
Microsoft allows us to use your office suite in two ways. The first of them is to buy the license, something that we have already said is not recommended, and the second of them is to pay for an Office 365 subscription. The subscription allows us to always access the latest version of Office (even Insider versions). ) and, in addition, it offers us a series of added services, the most attractive being being able to have 1 TB of storage in the cloud completely free of charge.
We can buy Office 365 for a single user for 69 euros per year, or the family plan, which we can share with 6 family or friends, for 99 euros per year. In addition, if we know how to find the right time (such as Black Friday or Prime Day), we can get the family plan on Amazon for 50 euros, that is, less than 10 euros per user. A bargain.
In addition, Office 365 allows us to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Android and iOS, something that we cannot do with the normal license.
There are free alternatives
If the subscription model does not convince us, we must also bear in mind that there are outstanding alternatives that allow us to completely forget about the Microsoft suite. For example, LibreOffice is one of the most complete office suites that we can find. This suite is completely free and open source for all users, and allows us to have alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint fully compatible with documents created with Microsoft programs.
We can download it from here .
If what we want is to make use of the cloud, in that case we can resort to Google Docs . This is Google’s cloud office suite, and it allows us to have an online word processor, a spreadsheet and a slideshow program from the browser, without having to download or install anything else. And, of course, without paying anything.
We can access the cloud from this link .
