Microsoft Office 365 (Home Premium version)

[Senior Paper Monitor]

Hi Milo (and any others),

Thanks for the input - has helped me get my head round the (at least in my opinion) rather confusing Microsoft product offerings.

I was concerned that the 'Home Office 2013' was 'not to be used in an office' and physically limited in some way - hence the description of SWMBO's business - that would appear to be out of the window.

Our situation is we are faced with the capital cost of new machine, office software (licences to various industry software, our back office system etc) and the more that goes on monthly contract the better (also flexible if she goes and/or we add) - so monthly is good rather than banging Mr Gates another lump of several hundred pounds.

We are running an old licence for Office 2007 Ultimate on our two W7 laptops - works fine on mine but outlook and a mortgage sourcing programme (large access database) on her machine just hate each other. I am unable to find the source of conflict, but I suspect it is something to do with running Outlook in compatability mode - so hopefullyan upgrade will sort it).

I can take the 365/2013 trial and revert if it doesn't.

£45 a month (3 users) seems attractive to me if it sorts our problems - and there are certainly some toys there we could benefit from.

For various reasons (compatability and integration with other systems) we have no option to move from MS.

It could be quite flexible for any new part time workers (which we are also considering, possibly homeworking)

I think I was getting confused between the role of 365 (its simply a collabaration suite really - at least my interpreation) and the traditional office products.

I have mixed feelings about cloud storage (and may have some FSA compliance issues with it anyway).


I would apprecaite anyone's comments on lilkely issues with upgrades (on the currrent machines) - a process I have never enjoyed in the past.

Also any warnings I may have missed.


Thanks for the help so far