Microsoft makes Office free for all devices smaller than 10 inches

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 25 Mar 2015 12:21 User comments (8)

The world's most popular productivity suite will now be free for all devices under 10 inches in size.

Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft CVP for Office 365 Client Apps and Services, said that editing and viewing docs on smaller screen devices will remain free as those devices are personal compared to anything above 10.1-inches, which it considers 'professional.'

"Currently, we are also using screen size to delineate between professional and personal use," Koenigsbauer wrote. "Based on our research, we are classifying anything with a screen size of 10.1 inches or less as a true mobile device: You're probably using it on the go, when it's not practical to use a larger computing device such as a PC or a Mac. You probably aren't using a mouse or a keyboard, instead navigating via touch interface. It's probably not a "pro" category tablet that is used for design or presentations."

Update: Microsoft reached out to inform us that the Office 365 subscription will allow you to create, edit and view documents from your mobile device.
Source:
PCW

Tags: smartphone Microsoft Office

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8 user comments

125.3.2015 13:52

Ryoohki

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One would hope it would be free to create documents and such. Otherwise there would be little incentive to use it vs google docs. It serves in a pinch. Office 365 was total garbage. I had to try it recently for a class.

225.3.2015 14:52

SProdigy

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I honestly don't understand this press release.

I own an iPad and an iPhone, and have never paid to use the office apps, including Outlook, Word and Excel.

With the latter two, I've been able to not only create, but edit documents, and it syncs with MS OneDrive (obviously) and also Dropbox.

Was it they were announcing they'll leave it as-is, because there hasn't been a problem to date.

And as far as I'm aware, I've also been able to use the online Office suite without a subscription as well.

327.3.2015 08:57

biglo30

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This is old news but I guess it's been made official.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 27 Mar 2015 @ 8:59

428.3.2015 03:50

cart0181

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Originally posted by Ryoohki:
Office 365 was total garbage. I had to try it recently for a class.

Are you sure it was Office 365 that you used? Office 365 is the same thing as regular Office, just with a subscription instead of paying up front to own the programs. What was it that you didn't like? I'm just curious. Otherwise, what you said would just be the same as me saying "Apple sucks."

58.4.2015 11:24

adre02

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Originally posted by Ryoohki:
One would hope it would be free to create documents and such. Otherwise there would be little incentive to use it vs google docs. It serves in a pinch. Office 365 was total garbage. I had to try it recently for a class.

It is the same program. What did you hate about it?

69.4.2015 12:51

Ryoohki

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It would not load for me at all. I had issues on 3 different machines (one vista, 2 windows 8). I just downloaded Office 2013 instead. I don't know what the problem was and was not inclined to figure it out.

711.4.2015 23:09

cart0181

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Maybe it was a problem with Click2Run. I have seen problems with that occasionally. I'm a little surprised you had the problem from 3 different PC's however. I'm assuming you obtained 360 from a legal source. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

812.4.2015 19:51

Ryoohki

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Originally posted by cart0181:
Maybe it was a problem with Click2Run. I have seen problems with that occasionally. I'm a little surprised you had the problem from 3 different PC's however. I'm assuming you obtained 360 from a legal source. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Yes, it was a legal source. I got a 6 month trial code for the class I was taking.

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