The ‘Tell me what to do…’ feature cuts right through any confusion in Office 2016. But Microsoft still struggles to answer the most basic question: W hy should I upgrade? That’s a question that I think Microsoft could answer easily-and I’ll tell you how it can, at the end. There’s no question that Office 2016 tops Google Apps, and I haven’t seen anything from the free, alternative office suites that should compel you to look elsewhere. If you’ve never owned Office, the free Office Mobile apps that can be downloaded from the Windows Store onto iOS, Android, and Windows Phones are very good-and include some of the intelligence and sharing capabilities built into Office 2016. My advice to an individual, family, or small business owner: Wait. It’s those people who fall somewhere in the middle-unwilling to commit to Office 365, but still wavering whether or not to buy Office-who must decide.
Windows 10 users already have access to Microsoft’s own baked-in, totally free version of Office, the Office Mobile apps. If you subscribe to Office 365, it’s a moot point those bits will stream down to your PC shortly. Office 365 is $7 per month for a Personal plan (with one device installation) and $10 per month for a Home Plan, where Office can be installed on five devices and five phones. You could still buy Office 2016 as a standalone product: It costs $149 for Office 2016 Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) and $229 for Office Home & Business, which adds Outlook 2016. And to use all of the advanced features of Office, you must own some sort of Windows PC.
But Microsoft’s brave new world runs best on Office 365, Microsoft’s subscription service, where everybody has the latest software that automatically updates over time. Microsoft says its new collaborative workflow reflects how people do things now, from study groups to community centers on up to enterprise sales forces. Even emailing copies back and forth is now tacitly discouraged. Printing out a document and marking it up with a pen? Medieval. Office now encourages you to share documents online, in a collaborative workspace. Collaboration in the cloud is the real difference with Office 2016.