0188C: The Microsoft Betrayal


Today my 1-month trial period of Microsoft's Office 365 Home product ended and I finally paid my annual subscription for the product/service. And I know this seems a little weird since I'm also quite the avid Google Apps advocate, but I also can't deny what a great deal Microsoft is pretty much throwing around freely.

Seriously, I have the essential MS Office 2013 suite (less Visio and Project) for up to 5 computers and 5 iPads, each user gets an additional 1TB of OneDrive space and the weird bonus of 60 Skype minutes every month. And all this for about PHP 300 a month? Insane. I guess Microsoft is just that determined to get people to stop pirating their products in this country.

Google Apps is still an ideal solution for your average small/medium business enterprise especially once you start scaling your workforce. The personal user doesn't necessarily need a shared mail server and so this Office 365 Home is a great compromise. And maybe in time Google Apps will develop the appropriate features to become a full MS Office replacement, especially for corporate slaves like myself.

And so now I've linked my Skype account with my Microsoft account given my love for unified sign-on solutions. For the same reason I was happy when Shelfari migrated to Amazon's login service for a more unified experience. The MS Office migration also allowed me to finally junk Evernote in favor of MS OneNote, which admittedly is a pretty great note-taking product. Damn you delightful paid solutions!

I still love you Google. But my corporate live means I can't quite leave Microsoft just yet. You'll get there...eventually.

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