Buying software

[Hectors House]

I'm on the lookout for a Microsoft product, I was going down the route of doing the shortest college course possible and getting it with a student licence, however, when I was doing a search on google today I found several sites with very reasonable prices. Both have the product I want in £ GBP, so far so good but when I looked closer both suppliers are in the United States.

So I am now wondering will I be clobbered with VAT and import tax if I pay and download. There is nothing is being physically delivered?

[MrPin]

I doubt it! I quite often buy actual physical stuff from USA, and I rarely pay tax on it. Depends on the courier. But in your case it's the Internet. And do make a backup disk, and save your licence key somewhere safe.

[dgul]

Treat it as a risk.  Say 10% chance of being intercepted and getting billed...  Does the price of the software still stack up?

[I've bought stuff from the USA -- I've only been charged by 'official' vendors, never by the smaller guys.]

[Hectors House]

Well the Student site in the UK says 

Quote

Please note due to licencing restrictions, products purchased from software4students will not activate outside the United Kingdom.

Which made me wonder, anyway this is what I'm after

https://www.pizzuk.com/office/microsoft-visio-professional-2016-download-1pc.html

 

Well from looking at the website again, the webchat doesn't work, and also the links to Twitter and Youtube, seems fishy

 

[leggers]

You could try getting a one month VPN subscription, and appearing to be in the US when you buy it? If the cost of the VPN subscription makes it worth while, of course. Shouldn't be not very much, from what I've seen.

[Hectors House]

2 minutes ago, leggers said:

You could try getting a one month VPN subscription, and appearing to be in the US when you buy it? If the cost of the VPN subscription makes it worth while, of course. Shouldn't be not very much, from what I've seen.

 

The site looks dodgy

[davidg]

Most of these sites selling cheap microsoft software are fake.

Can't you get a pirate copy off da Torrents?

[One-percent]

This is actually genuine as I've used them a few times

http://www.software4students.co.uk/

you need to be a student - read the t&cs. It's quite flexible and having kids in school counts 

[stormymonday_2011]

2 hours ago, Hectors House said:

 

Well from looking at the website again, the webchat doesn't work, and also the links to Twitter and Youtube, seems fishy

 

Definitely a genuine Microsoft product then.

[frozen_out]

1 hour ago, davidg said:

Most of these sites selling cheap microsoft software are fake.

Can't you get a pirate copy off da Torrents?

Not sure if that's ironic.

Regardless - they're not all dodgy. I got a fully functional OEM copy of Win 10 for £10. A full retail key costs about £150. Using an OEM license for home use is sort of legitimate, especially as O built the PC. Anyways... It did surprise me to find there is no equivalent work around for office.

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

Does your employer have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, often they include a staff discounted staff purchase scheme?

[The Masked Tulip]

Sainsburys were flogging Office 365 Personal for a tenner about a fortnight ago. There is a bug where you can upgrade personal to business.

It is also avaialble on ebay for OEMs.

You can join some colleges in Eire for about £15 which then allows you to get the student Office for 4 years for about £60.

In the past year I know people who have bought OEM licences for Win 7, 8 and 10 all for under £20 online.

[reddog]

Is it not possible to do what you want to do at work?

I use visio professional, I know the license is pricey cos I am always being asked if I really need it!

Also check out if there is a cut down version offered for free (I know the viewer is free), or if just a quick personal project couldn't you use an open source alternative?

 

[ChewingGrass]

Just use open office or whatever its called nowadays, complete open source office suite, opens virtually all MS office formats and is simpler to use and is not bloated to death with stuff you dont need. I've used it for years with few if any problems with compatibility. Even has a suite similar to mathcad built in.

[reddog]

PS: the really pros use enterprise architect (but it is a bit too much for me and more about putting in your application logic, rather than drawing a nice diagram)

 

PPS: visio has a 30 day trial, do you really want to be using this full time?

[frozen_out]

13 minutes ago, ChewingGrass said:

Just use open office or whatever its called nowadays, complete open source office suite, opens virtually all MS office formats and is simpler to use and is not bloated to death with stuff you dont need. I've used it for years with few if any problems with compatibility. Even has a suite similar to mathcad built in.

Sorry, but this just isn't true. For personal purposes you might get away with OO but Professional MS Office is pretty amazing these days, especially when linked up with SharePoint, Skype and a 365 subscription. They're very close to nailing it IMO. The only part that still lets them down is the browser. Bizarrely, Chrome has more functionality with SharePoint than IE.

[ChewingGrass]

1 minute ago, frozen_out said:

Sorry, but this just isn't true. For personal purposes you might get away with OO but Professional MS Office is pretty amazing these days, especially when linked up with SharePoint, Skype and a 365 subscription. They're very close to nailing it IMO. The only part that still lets them down is the browser. Bizarrely Chrome has more functionality with SharePoint than IE.

Fine if you want to give everything away to a large corporation, I believe that office 365 is a huge security risk that companies of organisations are exposing themselves too, its almost like unwittingly doing all you work on facebook.

Back door for industrial espionage in my opinion.

[frozen_out]

1 minute ago, ChewingGrass said:

Fine if you want to give everything away to a large corporation, I believe that office 365 is a huge security risk that companies of organisations are exposing themselves too, its almost like unwittingly doing all you work on facebook.

Back door for industrial espionage in my opinion.

Now that could well be true, in a decade or two many organisations may well be regretting the decision to outsource the handling of all their sensitive data.

Doesn't detract from the general point though - MS Office is pretty awesome right now.

[The Masked Tulip]

The main thing you need is an academic email account. You basically need to sign up to a college course that allows you to have such an email address. You then get the 4 years for about £60.

Or you buy a code online from ebay or other online etailer for between £10 and £25 and take a chance.

[nnails]

Office 365 is yearly subscription yet old offices you brought for ever until out of date.

 

I don't believe most people use more than 10 percent of office so why upgrade for something you already paid for

[reddog]

I know someone who bought some MS software on a student license in the name of has 7 year old son.  

Also know someone one who bought ms office on Apple with student license even though he wasn't a student, he was encouraged to do this by people in the Apple shop.

 

All this was a good 7 or 8 years ago though, I think they have been tightening up.

[stormymonday_2011]

4 hours ago, frozen_out said:

Sorry, but this just isn't true. For personal purposes you might get away with OO but Professional MS Office is pretty amazing these days, especially when linked up with SharePoint, Skype and a 365 subscription. They're very close to nailing it IMO. The only part that still lets them down is the browser. Bizarrely, Chrome has more functionality with SharePoint than IE.

Amazing at what ?

You have able to write emails, format documents, fill in spreadsheets, design presentations, create databases, send messages, store data for a long, long time now.  The main difference with 365  appears to be that you are now allowing MS to read it all at their leisure

[MrPin]

3 minutes ago, stormymonday_2011 said:

Amazing at what ?

You have able to write emails, format documents, fill in spreadsheets, design presentations, create databases, send messages, store data for a long, long time now.  The main difference with 365  appears to be that you are now allowing MS to read it all at their leisure

Does nobody see a problem with this, or does everyone want a webcam in the nettie?

[Habeas Domus]

6 hours ago, stormymonday_2011 said:

Amazing at what ?

You have able to write emails, format documents, fill in spreadsheets, design presentations, create databases, send messages, store data for a long, long time now.  The main difference with 365  appears to be that you are now allowing MS to read it all at their leisure

+1

For me Microsoft Office peaked in 2003 all the changes added since have made it worse.

Richard Brodie wrote all the good bits and he left years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brodie_(programmer)

As for SharePoint, back in the 1950's when everything was paper, people couldn't be bothered organising their files so every office would have a secretary (usually a female) to tidy things up and file the paperwork into neat filing cabinets.
Now everything is computerised, people can't be bothered creating folders with any logical structure so they pass things over to some sharepoint administrator (usually a female) who can tidy everything into nice folders and 'publish' it.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

 

[stormymonday_2011]

20 minutes ago, Habeas Domus said:

+1

For me Microsoft Office peaked in 2003 all the changes added since have made it worse.

Richard Brodie wrote all the good bits and he left years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brodie_(programmer)

As fc.f.or SharePoint, back in the 1950's when everything was paper, people couldn't be bothered organising their files so every office would have a secretary (usually a female) to tidy things up and file the paperwork into neat filing cabinets.
Now everything is computerised, people can't be bothered creating folders with any logical structure so they pass things over to some sharepoint administrator (usually a female) who can tidy everything into nice folders and 'publish' it.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

 

Office 365 might make sense for large businesses where upgrade cycles can be costly to roll out. It does not make much appeal to me as a consumer. Even for businesses the fact the the product is always on the latest version can have drawbacks as I am sure many will find out in due course part when it comes to migration to the product. MS support when you hit problems  is not always that great either.