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Comment by wfunction | Hacker News Reader

> Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing... Word was designed to help office workers produce business documents

And that's why they released a "Home and Student Edition".

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Home Edition: "People are familiar with using Office at work, so they'll probably want to use Office as well when it's time to design that Garage Sale flyer."

Student Edition: "Give them Office now at a discount, and they'll keep using (more expensive versions of) Office when they get a real job."

Office is named Office for a reason. Its entire existence revolves around the typical 20th-century white-collar office. All other use cases are secondary.

Instead of being cynical, maybe consider the fact that students find it easier to type essays with Word than with other products, so Microsoft gave them a discount so they could afford it? Win-win.

Just a thought.

what other products?

latex?

Between Word and Wordperfect, the latter was the better product. But Word was easier to use for simple documents.

I purchased the "Home and Student Edition" for my wife to use on her new MacBook Air. A few months ago she started writing short fiction, which we have since self-published on Kindle. We had to switch to Libre Office, though, because when I contacted Microsoft support and asked them about the "Non-Commercial use" restriction, they told me writing a novel counts as commercial activity.

Which it really confuses me as "Home" part. I can't think of so much case that full fledged WP useful in home context other than writing a letter maybe...

It's Home & Student, and a lot of students use it at home, as distinct from in the classroom. Also, it's not just WP. Plenty of people do stuff that benefits from using Office. They have hobbies or are members of local groups that produce fliers or newsletters (church, youth, etc).

By the way, Windows includes a free word processor, WordPad, that does what most home users need without them having to buy Office. There are also free viewers for Office docs...

Home and Business only costs $60 more than Home and Student.

However, I don't think there's a way to upgrade if you buy Home & Student and then discover that you need to do commercial work with it. You have to buy a new license.

I'm sorry but what did you just say? you can't write something on MS Word home edition and sell it for cash? seriously, i had no idea you could restrict something so basic as a word processor - FFS that's absurd!

It's not absurd: it's a perfectly reasonable and entirely rational deal.

Microsoft Office is commercial software costs roughly $300. If you want to use it for commercial purposes, you pay the price. However, there's a special deal where you get a Home & Student version for a third of the price, on condition that you don't use it for commercial purposes (ie as a replacement for the version you should be buying).

A lot of commercial programs are available in cheap student versions or in free versions for home (non-commercial) use. This is standard industry practice. It's not a Microsoft thing.

Wow. I always thought that the only restriction of the Home/Student edition was that it didn't come with Access or Outlook.

They prohibit you from making money with it? That blows my mind. Not only is it completely unenforceable (the PR backlash from Microsoft doing an enforced license audit of the likely purchaser of that version would be immense), it's completely pointless. Again, the products are differentiated by what they lack.

I wonder if the Microsoft legal department counts creating lemonade stand or yard sale signage to be "commercial use"...

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