[nickelpro]

I cannot think of a single non-business oriented user who needs MS365

Trivial personal users moved to free alternatives ages ago, business users are either using organizational licenses or are small-business users who aren't using family plans to begin with.

I'm mystified by who the affected audience is of this.

[alvah]

"Trivial personal users moved to free alternatives ages ago"

Of all the things that didn't happen, this didn't happen the most.

[raincole]

It absolutely happened. But people didn't move to open source solutions. They moved to Google docs.

[Spivak]

At university the school gave away Office for free to all students and we still all used Google Docs. Google ate Word's lunch by making the 99.99% experience waaay better.

[worik]

> Google ate Word's lunch by making the 99.99% experience waaay better.

That is fascinating to me

I have never used MS 365, but due to work have extensively used Google docs

It is awful. I am continually amazed at how awful it is

Astoundingly the most awful part is searching my docs. Compared to a directory tree of MD docs, it is simply dreadful. Oh Google, how the mighty have fallen!

MS 365 is worse than that?

[rchaud]

Chromebooks have been heavily embedded in US schools since 2014 or so. That's probably had an impact on students preferring Google Docs.

[nickelpro]

Everyone uses Google Docs, everyone, even people who don't use Google Docs have some interaction with Google Docs.

You use Google docs.

[alvah]

I use Google Docs and Office, and I guarantee outside whichever bubble you and the OP live in, millions of "trivial personal users" around the world also use Office, therefore didn't "move to free alternatives".

[petepete]

Not really. All the non tech folks I know just the free version of Google office suite for the handful of letters and spreadsheets they create a year.

[fencepost]

M365 Personal or Family can actually have a place as cost-effective cloud storage that 'just works' for consumers that don't care to go down the self hosting rabbit hole. It happens to include an office apps suite, but even without that it's extremely price competitive with other consumer-focused cloud storage. For $6-7/month you get 1TB of online storage, or for $8.25-10/month you get up to 6TB. Their competition (Apple, Google, Dropbox) pretty much all start at $10/mo for 2TB, possibly with paying for a year in advance.

The business plans are a different matter, but can make sense particularly if you're actually paying salary/wages for someone to maintain and support a self-hosted alternative.

[scarface_74]

For $129 a year I get:

- Office apps for all of my devices - Macs, Windows, iPhone, iPad and web

- 1 TB of cloud storage

And then I get both each for up to 6 users.

Dropbox’s 2TB storage plan by itself is $120 a year.

GSuite is okay and it’s our corporate standard. But it is nowhere near as good as Office

[donatj]

Sure but what do you actually use office for in your day to day home life?

I stopped paying for it in like 2010. I haven't needed to make a formatted document since college, and I graduated in 2006. Google sheets is quite good enough for my random spreadsheet usage.

[scarface_74]

Honestly, I only use Office365 to update my Resume maybe once per quarter.

I use OneDrive all of the time and it’s one of the three cloud backup solutions I have for Photos - Google Drive and iCloud being the other two.

But my Mom is one of the six users and my wife is another one and they use Word and Excel all of the time.

My mom is 80, a retired school teacher and has been using word processors and spreadsheets since we had AppleWorks for the Apple //e in the mid 80s.

[snakeyjake]

I use Excel to run my life. I have PTO calculators, workout and nutrition spreadsheets, and tons of financial spreadsheets with predictions, records, what-ifs, etc. How much did I spend on prescription eyewear in 2007? I can tell you. I've been using Excel since either the late 80s or very very early 90s so it is very familiar to me.

I use Word to draft and submit board reports for two non-profit boards I am on. One, has followed the same format, except for typeface updates, since 1951. You can take the very first vice president's report from 70+ years ago, set mine next to it, and they look practically identical (except for the typeface). Using the Word template someone made 20-ish years ago is very handy. I assume that is when they eliminated the secretary's position whose job it was to type up the reports for all of the old men, which I am one of now. I fill it out, hit save, email a copy to the rest of the board, show up with two printed copies, and put one in the binder that has every monthly VP's report since July 1951 and use the second as a reference for when I give my verbal report. Easy peasy no cloud bullshit.

I am a volunteer watershed steward, a fire prevention educator, and a member of an amateur radio and an astrophotography club. I give presentations 1-4 times per year for all of those and all of them are done in powerpoint. Again, no cloud bullshit. My presentations are on my laptops and don't rely on hopping on someone's wifi or tethering to my phone in a cinderblock building with no service anyways.

Even onenote is fantastic but I think that's free. I'm using it right now to plan a trip with 8 other people. When in-country with no, or poor, cell service the local notebook will be synced and ready for reference. No cloud bullshit.

[bubblethink]

Nobody moved to free alternatives. All the normies pay for Office. The cheapskates pirate it. The whole world runs on Office.

[donatj]

I don't know any individual that pay for office. Google Docs is good enough for 90% of things and free.

[LUmBULtERA]

In my sector of the business world in the US, every corporation pays for Office 365 for their employees. I don't know a single corporation that uses Google Docs.

[Macha]

Everywhere I've worked has been Google Docs. Usually there is a process on the side that if you really, truly, need MS office specifically they can get you a copy, mostly for people in certain parts of finance who do specifically insist on Excel, but Google Docs has been the standard for like a decade now.

[LUmBULtERA]

I'm curious which sector that is? I work in energy.

[Macha]

B2B tech, specifically ad tech for the biggest chunk of time

[bombcar]

The "free" alternative is Google Docs and friends.

Lots of people who don't need "business" office just use that, and even some businesses do.

[bonestamp2]

Yep, our company uses Google Docs/Sheets. If someone wants an MS Office application, they have to prove that Google Docs/Sheets can't do what they need. So most of use Google and it's fine. I even like somethings in Sheets better than Excel (and vice versa).

[KTibow]

I think that's an exaggeration, I know a few Google school districts and companies.

[nosioptar]

I know several attorneys that still use Corel.

[IIsi50MHz]

I vaguely remember that Corel WordPerfect Office, which includes the previously separate Quattro Pro spreadsheet application, has features that specific'ly target law professionals.

[silversmith]

My use case: for 100$/year, I can provide my family and my parents plenty of reliable cloud storage for their documents and pictures. With office suite thrown in as added bonus. I know of no other alternative that would provide equivalent of 6x1TB for such a low price.

[cgio]

I was also of that opinion for a while, but took the decision to move all things to a dedicated backup service instead. The lock-in with onedrive is palpable. So I swallowed the pill, downloaded all our files (very slowly...) and backed them up properly instead, with a service that will send me a hard drive with my files upon request.

[silversmith]

I'm curious, what did you select, and how is the UX? With OneDrive, it looks like any other folder in your windows/mac computer, and the built in gallery of the Samsung phones my family uses will transparently sync to OneDrive. Other apps on Android can also "directly" access OneDrive files, but that sadly needs support from the app. And it all is available for access online via browser.

My main goal is to prevent data loss if a device is ever stolen / fails beyond repair. And being able to tell your non-technical family members to "put important documents within this folder" / "log in here if you need access outside your normal devices" is low enough of a barrier so that they actually do it.

[pbhjpbhj]

UK Colleges and schools use MS, so students don't have much choice.

Some UK government stuff appears to be MS only, which really is awful. Of course it's Microsoft's "open" formats; so you can use FOSS alternatives but MS will screw up the formatting.

[TiredOfLife]

Where can I get the free 1TB cloud storage with versioning/delete protection?

[datavirtue]

Enjoy your featureless spam bucket.