Microsoft Office 365 (Home Premium version)

[Senior Paper Monitor]

Anyone have any info/opinions - seems too good to be true to me ?

Sole trader (Mrs Monitor) - she owns all the kit -I do some bits and pieces for her and she has a new PA/secretary/admin type.

Two recent W7 laptops (some minor issues running older version Office pack) and have just bought a new W8 machine for the PA girlie.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Office 365 is a cloud-based web-centric version of Office, paid for through an annual subscription. The default storage is on the internet, not your local PC. I'll repeat - you have to repurchase a subscription every year, and by default your files are stored on the internet, not locally.
Is that what you need? You can get much the same for free using Google Docs, or the free online Office software available through Hotmail....

Note that most PCs purchased nowadays come with a preinstalled "Starter" edition of Offfice which includes versions of Word and Excel good enough for most SOHO users

Or on the other hand, if you want to store stuff locally, take a close look at LibreOffice / Open Office - for a SOHO environment either would be OK , and free (I wouldn't suggest it for a large office: too slow at networking). Or even go down the Ability Office route as an extreme alternative

[Senior Paper Monitor]

I gather we can change the default in terms of the cloud storage ?

We have to use standard microsoft applications to intergrate with some industry apps - also use access for my own toys.

Driven by some problmes using older Office versions on recent OS versions - happy to take the £80 a year cost - just not keen on the cost of three full traditional licenses when investing at same time on a bunch of otehr kit.

[Milo Minderbinder]

edit - had to rethink this.

No, I don't think you have a viable local version of the software with the Home Business version - as far as I can see thats a web only system.
If you want a local copy of Office you'll need to look at plan E3 - at around £15 / month / seat.
Don't forget that Office Home Premium is specifically licensed for home use. Not for business use (and not for Home Business use)
Possibly better to try and fix the existing problems with your current office version. Whats actually wrong?

[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

[Milo Minderbinder]

If you're having compatibility problems like that, a new version of Office is unlikely to resolve them. If anything, the increased macro security settings are likely to cause complications
Theres nothing wrong with Office 2007 - you need to work the problem itself to fix this.
What are the symptoms?

[Mike-Bracknell]

Be aware, £15/month per person would buy you a copy of MS Office Home & Business OEM in a year and a half(ish). You also don't get to own the copy once you've finished via O365.

Can you tell i've just spent last week on an O365 licensing course? I'm not intending to sell much of it.

p.s. your fears about FSA regs may be well founded. Compliance is a massive kettle of fish.

[mixture]

Senior Paper Monitor,

Buy a new computer, get OEM Office on it and be done with it.

If you can't afford the upfront capex, lease it.

Which part of the FSA regs are you worried about re: cloud storage ? To be honest, the Data Protection Act is likely to be your primary concern !

[Milo Minderbinder]

Mixture
There are severe FSA compliance issues in terms of storing data - he'll have to be able to prove due diligence over proof of data security, and theres no way he can prove that with Office 365 as M$ won't specify where the data is stored - or make sufficient commitment to its security.
Similarly I've recently been looking at off-site backup for a similar customer and realised its a no-no, except for one backup provider who the FSA approved monitoring association have vetted.
As a fallout from the same requirements, I've had to to carry out complete hard drive encryption on their laptops, desktops, servers and backup drives. Thats the complete drives - not just the active partitions.

Going back to the supposed problem behind this - that mortgage sourcing database, I'd like to know more about which one it is, and what the problems are. A couple of years ago I had the unwanted honour of being one of the first to install some of those on Win7 machines, and there was a lot wrong with the M$ runtime installers - I had to get the company to remote in on each machine, one by one. I wonder if this is an echo?

[mixture]

As a fallout from the same requirements, I've had to to carry out complete hard drive encryption on their laptops, desktops, servers

Whoa there... laptops, yes...

But desktops and servers... come on, I think someone's got a bit of an overzealous compliance officer there (and I've met a few of those in my time !).

You can throw encryption at the cloud, then its no different to encrypted backup tapes.

[Milo Minderbinder]

I only wish you were right.....

they're "affiliates" to a major overseeing group, who effectively act as proxies for the FSAs oversight. Its that group who are insistent - and I've been through their paperwork, its totally unambiguous. Total hard drive enncryption of every physical drive - even the recovery partitions (obviously thats not going to be possible on many, but thats what they want)

And as for the backups, that can only be with a company thats undergone full due diligence. Irrespective of whether the data is encrypypted

[mixture]

they're "affiliates" to a major overseeing group, who effectively act as proxies for the FSAs oversight.

Yup. I've been in that situation before.... and its called overzealous compliance, and tends to particularly occur when the overseeing group is a large corporate entity.

One time in that situation, for example, I was told by a Compliance Director that both I and my staff needed to disclose on a regular basis details of all financial transactions (equity market deals etc.) that we took part on our personal accounts...."due to FSA compliance reasons".

Upon taking legal advice on the matter from a partner at an established law firm, I told them where to stick that particular request. It had no negative impact on my relationship with them.

Moral of the story is that the FSA issue guidelines, not laws.... and there is a lot of scope for compliance departments to over-egg the pudding in their interpretations of such guidelines.

But I don't know the ins and outs of your particular circumstance here, so I'll have to take your word for your particular situation... however I would just say don't paint every FSA regulated entity with the same brush that you have been painted with !

[Mike-Bracknell]

The FSA are kaput anyway, n'est ce pas?

[Milo Minderbinder]

back to the original question re Office 365
this is worth reading
Microsoft unwraps sysadmin-friendly Office 365 for biz update ? The Register

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by Milo Minderbinder

back to the original question re Office 365
this is worth reading
Microsoft unwraps sysadmin-friendly Office 365 for biz update ? The Register

Check out the margin they give you in years 2+

I'll be giving more margin myself