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Comment by maratc | Hacker News Reader

Now only if they could — in addition — bring Microsoft Office back, that would be great.

(As in: a one-time fee, installable, off-line software that does not change the way it looks, is feature-complete, and has only security updates for a long period.) I'd even buy Office XP for $99 again!

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And - while at it - they could overhaul the ribbon interface and use a new, disrupting interface inspired by the classic one used in 9x/2000/XP times (please read as exactly the good ol'one), rebranding it to "new classic" or something like that.

A YouTuber I watch uses a much older version of Office, one probably don't need the newest features, another benefit is the super fast startup times.

In my experience, the newest features (I mean those introduced in the last 20 years or so) while nice (and in a very few cases actually useful and used) are anyway "marginal" to most (like 80-90%) Microsoft Office users.

What Office (particularly Word and Excel) can do is usually several times (like 10x or 100x) what the normal, common, user actually needs or knows how to do.

In every normal office there are maybe 1 or 2 people that are "MS Office experts", all the other people use some pre-made template or use Excel and Word as some evoluted form of Calculator+Notepad.

That exists... It's called "Microsoft Office 2021 Professional" and it's on their website. Very expensive. You can find it (much) cheaper elsewhere.

It's not off-line, not feature-complete, and has support only up to 2026 (no extended support).

Why would microsoft support a one-time fee software forever?

> has only security updates for a long period.

I didn't say "forever", and paying $250 for a suite that will stop getting updates in 3-4 years is not what I had in mind.

The last update for Office XP was in 2004, 3 years after release. They've been pretty consistent with that.

Mainstream support for Office XP ended on July 11, 2006, and extended support ended on July 12, 2011, 10 years after release.

Microsoft Office has always been available as a standalone purchase.

2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021 perpetual versions have all been released alongside the subscription offering.

I'm not sure what you mean in another comment by "not offline" - it will work perfectly well offline after you activate it, just like all versions of Office since Office XP.

I have the 365 subscription (from school) and it asks for password every couple of months. The old Office was activated once, and never asked for that again.

You're using the subscription product, so it behaves like a subscription product.

If you bought the retail version you wouldn't need to to log in at all.

Because it's the 365 subscription. The standalone versions don't do that. You just activate once the same as the old versions.

You can still buy Office 2021 for $250. My guess is this might be the last time they offer that though.

I bought it for $50, you just have to look around. Yes it's legit, I downloaded it straight from microsoft with my purchased license.

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