[OldHand2018]

Microsoft offers Office as both a 1-time purchase and on a subscription basis. The price of the 1-time purchase is generally about what a subscription would cost over 3 years.

Since Office is the kind of tool you would keep for 3+ years and has an established reputation, this doesn't seem like a bad deal. Especially since Office has always been expensive.

People get angry about subscriptions when the subscription price far exceeds the previous 1-time purchase cost within a reasonable amount of time. In the case of the Android tool in this article, that's either $30 up front or $5 per year. So it seems that the subscription is either underpriced or the up-front price is too high: it's not surprising that they didn't have a lot of anger directed at them. Flip that around and say $15 per year or $30 up front, and I'd bet you have a lot of anger directed at them.

[est31]

Note that MS Office has a cycle length of 3 years, while their cycle length is somewhere between 7 and 10 years.

[judge2020]

How long do you get updates for the 'single year' edition of MS Office now? Does Office 2017 still get security/bugfix updates?

[Crosseye_Jack]

I forget what they promise to support, but MS are still pushing secuirty updates for Office 2010 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4563408/august-2020...

EDIT: Dug out the end dates for Office.

Ver - Mainstream Support - Extended Support

Office 2010 - no longer supported - October 13, 2020

Office 2013 - no longer supported - April 11, 2023

Office 2016 - October 13 2020 - October 14, 2025

Office 2019 - October 10 2023 October 14, 2025