I have been out of the PC game for a long time. Got a laptop recently and discovered you need to sign up for a subscription to use the office package, doesnt just come with windows any more. No big deal, my wife says she has a subscription as part of her phone contract.

Cool. Easy.

What. The fuck. Is this mess? Everything is saved on their servers instead of locally? I try to sign myself in but thats impossible because shes signed in except I cant use her licenses because im signed in which im not because shes signed in?

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE? WHO THE FUCK HAS PUT THEIR NAME TO THIS SHIT? HOW DOES ANY CUNT USE IT?

Not only that but you cant just open excel any more, you have to open the whole windows office launcher portal (which isnt even called office) and fumble your way around to try and find the file first or some bollocks? I don't even know I nearly launched the laptop out the fucking window.

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.org 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

office package doesnt just come with windows any more

strictly speaking, it never was part of windows, or came bundled with it from Microsoft. Our first family windows computer (Win 98) didn't come with an office license, instead the manufacturer included only "Word" and "Works" as a "value add". It was a separate piece of software that we could install (or not if we chose to).

Up to including windows 7, every single computer any of my friends and family purchased came only with a windows license, If they wanted MS Office, they had to buy the license separately and install the software package themselves. Sometimes it might have come preinstalled as a trial, but that still required purchasing a license after a set amount of time (usually 90 days, I believe), and it varied from OEM to OEM, as did their other bloatware (Norton, Eset, etc.).

I have only noticed Windows installing office out of the box with Windows 10/11, where they install the app from the MS store during the initial setup - I assume they started this on Windows 8 as well, but I have only seen PCs being upgraded from 7 to 8/8.1, never a fresh install.

But even then, it's just a limited trial for their office 365 suite.

[–] twopi@lemmy.ca 3 points 18 hours ago

I knew you could throw Windows OS onto a laptop. Didn't know you could throw a laptop out of Windows OS.