Office 365 vs. Office 2013 – A Difficult Decision

Most professional organizations still include Microsoft Office as a critical component of their business software suite. You can still expect to find a copy of Word and Excel on most business desktops. Every three years, a new version of Office comes out and the IT department coordinates the upgrade process. And if you ever work from home, you probably have a copy of Office on your home computer as well.

This year's new version of Office, however, is not the same. Microsoft released Office 2013 and Office 365. Office 2013 is the typical purchased-software option whereas Office 365 uses a monthly subscription model. Deciding which version to buy becomes complicated due to new wrinkles in Microsoft's licensing agreement. If you buy Office 2013, your license is tied to one computer. This means if you buy Office 2013 now, and then buy a new computer to replace your old one later this year, you can't move your copy of Office 2013 to the new computer. What?!?!?! Microsoft really wants people to switch to the Office 365 monthly subscription model.