New Microsoft 365 pricing live, some products up by 42% due to AI | Hacker News Reader

New Microsoft 365 pricing live, some products up by 42% due to AI

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52 pointsninko32 comments

If AI is so great, these price rises will pay for themselves many times over.....

Have any HNer's experienced or observed any productivity increases, or even any utility increases from co pilot?

We've lost customers over the increased price.

Probably worse productivity because now I have to read paragraphs of emails that could have been sentences.

Had a clueless business analyst get Copilot to write a bunch of stories for an epic, then when she had a meeting with me (and three other people!) to go through the stories I had to tell them that 90% of what they had done was wrong.

If they'd come to me from the outset I could have told them the one story title and handful of acceptance criteria that was required but instead we wasted 5 person hours and whatever Copilot costs.

Without context it reads like you work in a publisher that publishes fiction...

I thought the same. Business lingo has really jumped the shark. "story" is already stupid enough, but "epic"? Seriously? :-D

I assumed this was standard terminology for Jira? It's been the same for me at two completely different tech companies.

It might be standard terminology but to outsiders like me it sounds like an over-the-top parody of corporate speak.

I always hoped we could make "cinematic universe" for really enormous refactorings.

I thought there was a new level above epic - theme I think?

I don't disagree - I worked on a task management system many years ago and task and subtask always made a lot more sense than story and task. And epic should just be project.

It's the brittle systems that try and force a peg in a hole regardless of size or shape.

I've worked with customers who stories worked well because the concept is just to talk through use-cases. Others have been involved in building software previously and it's overkill.

Current corpo job uses the phrase stories, but refuses to get involved with any planning or spec building so task and subtask would make more sense, but subtasks aren't visible on the board and we aren't allowed to update it.

We also aren't allowed to move a task back, so every time someone accidentally moves the wrong task we have to cancel it and recreate it. Such a pain.

Copilot actually can search outlook emails on Mac. This is the greatest achievement of any AI.

Sarcasm? The new Mac outlook also stores each email as a separate plain text tarball of HTML. It’s the greatest unintentional Microsoft feature ever because you can finally read all your email however you please

Splotlight search might work, but until copilot, trying to search your own email in New Outlook wouldn't find emails literally right in front of your nose, on the screen.

They do increase RAM and processor usage.

It’s pure gold for contractors trying to snow clients. The people who used to struggle to produce a good looking document can now quickly produce something without visible tells that they have no idea what they’re talking about, even though they still have no idea.

It makes no sense to use 365 anymore, there are so many other alternatives

Not if all parties require Office documents, and its collaboration features.

Any word on 'A' (Education) licenses?

A1/A2/A3?

Microsoft is committed to delivering continuous innovation and value through Microsoft 365. Over the past several years, we’ve invested deeply in security, compliance, productivity, AI, and IT management— helping organizations stay productive, secure, and competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape. This change reflects the significant innovation delivered over the past several years and the added value customers will gain with new additions to the suites, including major advancements in AI (ex. Copilot Chat, Copilot Chat Analytics), security (ex. Microsoft Defender for Office P1), and IT management (ex. Intune Suite).

so a long way of saying: we need to fund our AI.

Now, instead of incremental UI changes, we can parade an infinite array of slop features to justify lifetime subscriptions by businesses, because, what are they going to do, learn something else?

War chest emptying, must raise taxes.

No one who takes their job seriously uses Copilot anything.

hey AI, your em dash is showing.

I pasted directly from MS's site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/2026-m365-pac...

Sorry if my comment was not clear, but my commment has an em dash because MS used one, and they likely use Copilot to write the blog :D

It is customary to start a quoted paragraph (e. blockquote) with a greater then symbol (>) e.g.:

> This is a quoted paragraph

It is then expected that you share some insights or opinions on the paragraph you quoted. Just pasting a quote without any context nor markers makes it look you these are your own words.

You worded that as if you speak for Microsoft, but your account is 2 days old and this is your first comment, which makes me suspect you are a karma-farming bot.

I pasted directly from MS's site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/2026-m365-pac...

Sorry if my comment was not clear, but my commment has an em dash because MS used one, and they likely use Copilot to write the blog :D

That quote is really funny because it reads like a parody.

Next time just use quotation marks and add a link to the source.

It is a parody. Inovation, value, security - things which Microsoft strugles to deliver since 30 years.

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