Hopefully...
This will drive a good number of the cloud-fearing (i.e. sensible) users onto alternative office suites and avoid the now-it's-available/now-it's-not O358 altogether.
Redmond's reaper cometh: October 2026 set to bury a graveyard of Microsoft products
October 2026 is shaping up to be a busy month for administrators as it heralds the end of several big products, along with the retirement of components that could mean sleepless nights for the ill-prepared. After the demise of Windows 10 in October 2025, sysadmins might have hoped for some respite from Microsoft's ax, but 2026 …
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 13:00 GMT Fred Daggy
Re: This will drive few if any cloud-averse business customers to alternative office suites
... and, let's not forget this : Muscle Memory.
Because how many of the workforce enter and are determined to never use their brain again and work on auto-pilot?
It's not just the borked updates from MS, its the changes to the interface that generate stress for overworked IT. "Sorry mate" (gender and identity neurtral term), "Not my fault Microsoft decided to move the icon 2cm to the left and you clicked the wrong thing".
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 19:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
It seems that MS are shortening the long term support for many products in order to push people into SaaS subscription models.
I admit that I've not used publisher in several years but 4-5 year support cycles for operating systems seems a bit harsh.
A few of my customers are starting to get seriously pissed off with MS as various products that they have used or had permanent liceses for have been "depreciated" or "terminated" not to mention the shit show that is Outlook.
My personal opinion is that it's purely and simply revenue driven, force everyone into SaaS cloud based systems and you can screw them over for a subscription and then jack up the charges with the threat of pulling the plug.
Hopefully this will push more people away from MS and towards more on-prem and open source software.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2026 20:11 GMT Terry 6
FFS Publisher is essential in some use cases just not for ones who could buy it
Not the ones that the shit-for-brains marketing fuckwits of Microsoft sold it to.
They kept it in the Pro versions of Office and took it out of the Home version.
Publisher is of little use in corporate offices. It doesn't belong in that environment. Never really has been They have people who do Design.
But for the small business and sole trader, for the charity and non-profit sectors. For voluntary groups and home users it's brilliant.
In Publisher we can quickly create a flyer, or a menu. A poster or a greetings card.
Got a church fete coming up? Or a charity auction? A cake sale or a used school uniform stand? A Sale or a new item in stock. A library's Summer reading list. A small cafe's price list
Publisher all the way.There's nothing like it for ease of use, simplicity and versatility. It has a gentle learning curve and great tools for the small scale user.
So of course these pathetic sad bastards took it away from us. And now they want to kill if.
Fuck 'em
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 21:47 GMT Terry 6
Re: FFS Publisher is essential in some use cases just not for ones who could buy it
No they're bloody not!
We are precisely not referring to the tech savvy here.
This is about ordinary members of the public, who wouldn't ever have heard of Scribus- a package which is, or looks, more complex to use than Publisher, and certainly less friendly.
Whereas Publisher used to be part and parcel of the software package that they already have.and which is totally familiar to them
(And Inkscape is in a different orbit all together)
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People who don't care about proprietary software, don't know there is any other kind, and aren't creating long lasting or major publications. They just want to knock out the week's hymn sheet, the dally specials or the price of second hand school jumpers.
Stuff like that, made to look good to catch attention for a day or two.
People who have no interest in tech, just want to do stuff. And who will probably turn to ChatGPT to do it for them now.
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Thursday 23rd July 2026 02:36 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Re: "shit-for-brains marketing fuckwits of Microsoft"
Perhaps restricting that descriotion to just the "marketing" division is overly optimistic.
To be honest most of those flyers, menus, posters and greetings cards are pretty ghastly asthetically (like most DIY DTP.)
I still encounter efforts, often from whom you would expect better and whose typeface salad ought to a crime against humanity or at least typography.
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