Microsoft may charge different prices for Office with or without Teams Microsoft is putting forward a plan to charge customers different prices for Office if it does or doesn’t come with Teams - the latest twist in its campaign to head off an EU antitrust probe at the pass. Last month, sources said the Redmond-based biz was considering whether to stop bundling Teams with Office following …
@Non
Yes, surprisingly useable using Chromium on a Linux laptop for online teaching.
Was able to operate as far as I can see as well as a native Windows laptop that did not have locally installed Office.
Teams is of course the tricky bit: screen annotation is flaky.
"Knowing Mickey$oft, they'll probably charge more for the version without Teams."
There's plenty of precedent for such behaviour in Germany, BMW used to charge their customers for removal of ashtrays and lighters in their cars.
It'll be like Windows XP Edition N (No Media Player) though, it will technically exist and there wil be a SKU for it, but it will be rarer than rocking horse shit in the real world.
There won’t be a version without Teams, just that only those versions with the correct licence key will install the full Teams. The versions with the non-Teams licence key will install sufficient Teams related “nag” functionality to get in the way of using other products…
>>The versions with the non-Teams licence key will install sufficient Teams related “nag” functionality to get in the way of using other products…
There will be a cut down 'Teams-lite' that just does audio/vid calls and chat. "MS Direct/Instant Messaging (D/IM)" or somesuch.
Like MS Mail Vs Outlook.
Mark my Words.
To be honest I actually like OneNote. I started using it as it when it first appeared on the MS phone, long before I had 365. When I had to get a new phone (e/os) a year or so back it was the only piece of office I installed on the phone.
I only use it for syncing notes, write on PC and they are on on phone as well. It does that well enough and really has not change in the years I have been using it. So works for me.
I hope the EU throws the book at them and gives them a hefty fine while they're at it!
Teams sucks and I've been forced to suffer using it for work exactly because of them bundling it "free" and thus being lapped up by organisations which were already fully locked into Windows and Office. It becomes almost impossible to sell the idea of paying another licence for a better product when you're dealing mainly with nontechnical bean counters who consider all similar applications to be equal and this one's "free" (but not as in FOSS because that's "unsupported shareware" in case you didn't know).
Time and again they get away with conning people into mass adoption of the poorest quality product whilst snuffing out the real innovators.
It's just a shame that there seems to be no way to stop them from doing this upfront rather than applying some minor punishment long after the damage has been done.
When I was complaining about my frustrations with sharepoint, someone I was boring said to view it as a minimal viable product, microsoft pinches it out and bundles so businesses will use the one they're "already paying for" rather than getting something better. It only being good enough to get in the door as microsoft has no real care for it, just care about you not going elsewhere.
It's honestly helped my mental health a lot to think about it that way, even if my day to day is still a frustrating hell..
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