Effective December 15th this year Microsoft will be increasing the Office 365 Home edition in Malaysia from RM299.99 to RM379.99 an increase of roughly 25%. According to the notice sent to all users, Microsoft will continuously assess pricing of its products and will make changes in response to the assessment and feedback.( but not reduction, we are sure)

Albeit the new Office 2016 has new features but mostly maintains the core assets within the application, at a time when everything is going up in KL, from toll, price of goods and overall cost of living, this new revision of the productivity software especially directed at the home users will definitely not bode well with the customers. But again timing has never been Redmonds biggest strength, all one needs to do see is to have look at their illustrious past of acquisitions and release of new products.

So how will the increase affect everyone, or how will the users react?  There is always Google docs which is free and is as functional as Office an option worth considering if you find the price increase unjustified. If this is going to be an annual affair, more users will possibly give Docs more attention and shift towards the free app leaving Office…well empty!

Any how, we feel software prices should be coming down as adoption increases after all there is no raw material involved in coding software! Microsoft has yet to adopt and grapple in what Google believes in which is open source, and continues to ignore signs of dwindling adoption of its OS and sub products. This new price ‘alignment’ it calls, could be another self struck arrow