Imagine a situation where post preparation of a very exhaustive PowerPoint presentation which needs to be presented to a very high value customer you realized that the laptop carrying the presentation has been stolen and only 3 hours are left for the actual presentation. The situation might panic you from head to toe. Microsoft Office 365 will be the perfect solution in this situation. Microsoft has brought Office 365 which is a cloud based version of Office.
Microsoft Office 365 is bundle of Office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Point to note is that these applications will run on Windows7, Windows 8 and Mac OS X Machines only. Unlike Office 2013, which is a desktop version, the Office 365 is a Web-based platform with cloud storage.
Microsoft has given an option of installing Office 365 on 5 different Windows PCs or Macs that will include five licenses of Office 2013 Pro. Office 2013 comes up with a lifetime no expiry license whereas Office 365 will have a yearly subscription. You need to renew the license every year.
Office 365 comes up with 20GB external storage on SkyDrive which you can access virtually from anywhere either from your PC or mobile as long as you are connected to the internet. Microsoft also offers 60 minutes of international free Skype calls with Office 365. The ‘Office On Demand’ feature of Office 365 enables you get a virtualized versions of the full desktop software onto your Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC using streaming. Once you subscribe to Office 365 you will be able to get the latest version of Office on your PC anytime within minutes. The amazing thing is that the Office software isn’t permanently installed on your PC; you can access it like any other web application.
Microsoft has brought in two flavours of Office 365: Office 365 Home Premium and Small Office 365 Business Premium both having full Office 2013 Pro. The key difference is in the way it is used. Five or less people can use Office 365 Home Premium on up to five separate devices and can customize the application on their Microsoft ID whereas the Office 365 Small Business Premium is billed per user per year; the licenses can’t be shared with other users.
How to download MS Office 365:
You get directions to download Office 365 from our previous article published here .
The basic Office 2013 cost with Home and Student addition is around $140, but as you keep on adding other office apps like Outlook, Access, etc. the price will go upto $200. Office 365 Home Premium cost is $100 per year while Office 365 Business Premium is $150 per year.
So if you have only one machine with the need of Office Suite then go for Office 2013, but if you have multiple PCs at home where Office suite is required, you should go for Office 365. Five licenses of Office 2013 Home & Student will cost $700 which is 7 times the cost of Office 365 Home Premium. Microsoft Office 365 web based platform has clear advantage over Office 2013 desktop application.
