Comment by nwh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nwh | Hacker News Reader

I struggle with the move towards everything being subscription based. Very quickly it becomes difficult to quantify just how much it is costing to own, and maintain ownership of a license for a piece of software.

If I see an application that is $50, I can quickly quantify that into hours I need to work for this to be paid off. I can compare the value I am getting to the amount of currency that I expend on it. I know that if I need to in the future, it will always be there for me to rely on.

If I see a service that is $12 a month it becomes a much harder game. Sure it might be worth it for the first month, but the second one becomes a much harder decision. Do I unsubscribe, and lose all the data that I have stores, or do I pay another $12 and hope that it continues to be useful to me in the future? In the future I might need to sign up again, which is a lot more hassle than it is worth.

All of these "small" subscriptions are beginning to cost me more than I'd like.

That's one of the reasons why companies love them. People subscribe for a few months, stop using it as much but forget or don't bother to unsubscribe. The entire gym industry is based on this principle.

OTOH, companies love to buy them too. A predictable monthly cost that can be budgeted, that is directly tied to the number of employees? Yes, please. Doesn't make as much sense for consumers, but Office 365 isn't aimed at them.

Yes, that is true. Although Microsoft are trying to get consumers on to Office 365 too - they got rid of their 3 computer home license to push the Office 365 home package which runs on 5 devices. Personally I don't think that's a great idea - I think too many people are going to think about the cost of a subscription and decide it's not worth it. Buying a license as a one off cost with your new computer is easier to swallow imo.

Yeah, I was surprised how reasonable the Home family pack was last time I went shopping. Not sure of the price, but it was definitely under $200 for 3 installs. Now they want $100 a year for 365. You get more for the money (Mac support, 5 installs, Access) but it will definitely end up costing a lot more money.

It really depends on what the prices are. With your example, it's obviously a bad deal. But in this case, Office 365 is $150 a year ($12.50 per month), while the packaged version of Office Professional is $400. So you get a good 2.5 years of use out of it before the curves cross.

Yes, and there is exactly the dilemma. After I buy Office, I expect to not upgrade it for at least 5 years, if not 10. (but surely not only 2.5)

I'm still running Office 2007. Bought it for $50 as a student and it's still fine.

I recall reading somewhere that Office's biggest competitor was its previous version.

This is most definitely true for Microsoft and Adobe. Hence, they're both switching to subscription models.

A great example for me was Boxcryptor, a solution to encrypt files in your Dropbox with encFS.

It used to be software. You buy it for $50 or whatever and use it. Now they are transitioning to a service model where you pay $40/year/user forever.

Their reasoning was transparent: they aren't selling enough perpetual licenses. I get that, but it's annoying to me

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