Would you still like to rent it for $50/month?

Because there is nothing stopping Microsoft from jacking up the price next month. And for the many reasons listed on this thread - if you actually depend on exact layout and functionality, you don't actually have much of a choice.

Renting it sounds like a poor choice in the long term. I think people usually keep one Office software for about a decade or so, or close to that. Paying $100 every year for 10 years is a lot more than paying $300 at once. Also for small businesses it's $150, and probably more for bigger companies.

What functionality are you missing from the free LibreOffice? Or are you willing to pay that much just because you're "used to it"?

> What functionality are you missing from the free LibreOffice?

I'm not sure if LibreOffice deals with this better than OpenOffice, but being able to open documents with "track changes" enabled, and not having them come out like garbage, would be nice. (I tried finding the specific document in question, but I guess I've erased it since then.)

> are you willing to pay that much just because you're "used to it"?

Depending on how much time it takes you to ramp up to your productivity in a paid version, it might make a lot of sense to pay that much "because you're used to it".

I haven't used LibreOffice since the true OS version was still OpenOffice, does it even have Track Changes itself, or is that part of why files w/track changes on look like garbage?

TT is probably the most useful feature for me in word, both for technical documents going out for review and my personal fiction writing things when it is time for me to deal with an editor (haven't yet, but EVERY writer I know says you need track changes to be able to effectively work with an editor).

As a coder who have used CVS, SVN and now Git to manage changes in my codebases, I honestly can't understand the appeal of Word change tracking.

I disable it with haste if I ever open a document with those ugly colors popping out.

I'm not sure, but I couldn't figure it out. In the end, I had a coworker print off a copy of the document from Word, and just kept that on my desk.

> What functionality are you missing from the free LibreOffice?

This had been discussed a lot lately. On one hand, for a lot of people Calc is not an alternative to Excel. And while features on Writer and Word can be comparable, a lot of people feel more comfortable using Word (I have experimented this with both general and power users), not to mention that in some platforms is really buggy (I got tired of attempting to make it work on my wife's macbook pro for instance)

It seems that LibreOffice is going under a major refactoring, which is good for the product but I wonder is that effort would result in lack of innovations in the short term.

> What functionality are you missing from the free LibreOffice?

Editing text in outline mode, with all the keyboard shortcuts to easily reorder headers, open and close paragraphs, etc...

This will be equivalent to buying every single Office version during those 10 years, not just once, because (hopefully) the subscription service will be regularly updated.

Missing functionality:

- An intuitive, responsive UI engineered around the most common use cases. It should hopefully eschew dropdowns and modals and instead attempt to provide what I need without any clicks or with only one click.

- No nonsense editing -- too often in LibreOffice I have to crack open the paragraph view (to see all symbols) and go line by line to figure out why a list didn't integrate properly, to re-indent a line that got wonky, to re-apply a setting that shifted. I want it to Just Work(tm) like Office is much closer to accomplishing in 2013.

- Attractive designs that I won't be embarrassed to apply. I can waste a few hours designing a custom theme (a requirement for any themeing in LibreOffice), by why waste the time? I want a simple one click design tool that applies an attractive, professional design. A quick click through LibreOffice colors and designs shows me that I would be mortified to use most of them professionally. They feel like they were done in the 1980's and haven't been updated since.

There's a few.

Funny, I have the first two issues with MS Office (or at least, had until and including 2007 - haven't tried 2010, and luckily I don't have to deal with Windows and .docx files anymore).

Office 2013 has a great look and feel I've really glommed on to. I spend enough time at the computer that I want to enjoy (as much as I can) my time on it. The tools I use matter. If I enjoy using the tools I stay productive longer.

I enjoy using 2013, and I've never been this enthusiastic about a Microsoft product since, well, ever.