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Microsoft recently announced price increases and free Office 365 for some users.
Price Increases
Let’s start with the bad news. Microsoft is increasing the annual price for Office 365 effective from the 19th of February 2020. The increase is not bank-breaking if you look at it from a monthly payment point of view. See the comparisson in the table below:
| Package | Old Price | Old Monthly Price | 2020 Price | 2020 Monthly Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office 365 Personal | R899 | R74.92 | R999 | R83.25 |
| Office 365 Home | R1,199 | R99.92 | R1,399 | R116.58 |
Office 365 Personal
Office 365 Personal includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher (PC only) and Access (PC only) as well as Skype and 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage and is linked to one account.
Office 365 Home
With the Office 365 Home package, you get the same apps but with the ability to link 5 other family members to your account. It also includes 6TB of cloud storage. Each member of the family will be allocated 1TB.
Downloads
Apps for Personal and Home can be downloaded on PC, Mac, Android and iOS, except for Publisher and Access.
Get Office 365 for Free
So how does this work? Price increases on the one side and getting Office for free on the other?
Why?
When you are between the ages of 8 and 24, you qualify to get Office 365 and 5TB cloud storage for free on Microsoft OneDrive. Four companies, Microsoft South Africa, Penquin, Lava Lamp Lab and NBConsult joined in a partnership in May of 2017 to help learners in school from grades R up to grade 12 to have access to the basic but vital programs used in a lot of jobs these days.
What is included?
The package includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote as well as the 5TB OneDrive cloud storage. The apps can be also downloaded on PC, Mac, Android or iOS.
How to Sign Up
Follow the link to Mahala.ms using your desktop, tablet or phone, fill in the form and click or tap “Sign Me Up”. When successful, you will receive an email with your username and password which you will use to access the programs.
Closing
Price increases are a bummer, but the coders working to make this software available to you also need to eat, and R83 per month is really not that much for powerful software such as Office 365.
The free signup for office is probably one of the best initiatives launched for the youth to help them acquaint themselves with software used in most jobs these days.
