Microsoft has just announced a new version for its office suite outside of the Microsoft 365 subscription. Soberly titled Office 2024, it will allow the purchase of a lifetime license and permanent offline use but without the AI functions of Copilot.
Good news for users of Microsoft’s office suite, a new standalone version of Office has just been announced, or rather confirmed by the company. In recent years and like many other software publishers, Microsoft has gradually changed the heart of its distribution model by moving from a single lifetime license purchase system to that of a renewable subscription, for anything and everything. What. Whether for games with Xbox Game Pass, productivity with Microsoft 365 or even the operating system with Windows 365, the Redmond firm strongly encourages its customers to turn to its subscription solutions.
While this model may seem attractive at first, with a much lower entry cost than acquiring a perpetual user license, it actually turns out to be much more expensive in the long term and results in a loss of control of users over their tools, particularly risky for professionals. Furthermore, in many situations, the subscription model with continuous updates and permanent Internet connection is neither desirable nor feasible; certain professions and certain applications requiring a perfectly stable system isolated from the rest of the world, for reasons of security and reliability.
Well aware of these realities and these needs, Microsoft will therefore offer in 2024 a new version of its office suite, including among others the famous Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which can be purchased for life in one go and will work without a Microsoft subscription. 365. This 2024 vintage will be available in two versions, one for individuals simply called Office 2024 and one for businesses called Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) 2024. Both will benefit from maintenance for a period of five years but can obviously be used ad vitam aeternam by users as long as they have a compatible computer.
Microsoft Office 2024: new functions but no AI
As for the expected new features, nothing specific for the moment, the company confining itself to mentioning a few generalities in an official note announcing the arrival of the Office 2024 preview, scheduled for mid-April, before deploying the final version later in the year. In addition to classic improvements in terms of security, performance and accessibility, we learn that “new meeting creation options and search improvements in Outlook, dozens of new Excel features and functions, including dynamic charts and tables” are planned, without further details. Microsoft, on the other hand, announces that Office LTSC 2024 will be delivered without the Publisher desktop publishing (desktop publishing) software, of whichend of life is planned for October 2026and that Teams will no longer be included and will need to be downloaded separately.
Furthermore, Office 2024 will be deprived of real-time collaboration and co-editing functions, which will be reserved for the Microsoft 365 version. A purely mercantile choice to push the subscription formula and all the more regrettable than an alternative like OnlyOffice, a complete and open source office suite, allows multiple people to work on the same document in its office applications. In addition and as expected, the creation and editing functions based on AI and in particular on the Copilot assistant will also be reserved for Microsoft 365 users, with a “technical” argument for the less strange “As a disconnected product, Office LTSC is not eligible [au programme Microsoft Copilot, NDLR] ». If the current use of Copilot does indeed require an Internet connection, with the assistant currently running on Microsoft servers, the arrival of new “AI PCs” equipped with NPUs (electronic circuits dedicated to the local execution of artificial intelligence programs) which the company continues to harp on to us should ultimately allow us to benefit without any problem from this type of function on a “disconnected product”. Once again, this choice seems to be driven by the desire to push users towards the Microsoft 365 subscription solution rather than by real technical considerations.
Microsoft Office 2024: a price increase of 10% for businesses
Concerning the prices of the next standalone version of Office, an unpleasant surprise awaits professional customers there too, with Microsoft announcing a price increase of up to 10% for its Office LTSC Professional Plus, Office LTSC Standard, Office products. LTSC Embedded and for individual applications. For example, the Office Home and Small Business 2021 and Office Professional 2021 versions cost €299 and €579 respectively to purchase, and could therefore see their prices rise to €329 and €639, significant increases at the scale of a corporate IT park. For the version intended for individuals, on the other hand, Office 2024 in short, Microsoft announces that it will maintain the current price, namely €149 for a perpetual license for use on a single computer at a time.
In terms of compatibility, the different versions of Office 2024 will be available in 32 and 64 bit versions, for Windows 11 and Windows 10 (with the exception of computers equipped with a processor under Arm architecture which will necessarily require Windows 11) and a version for macOS will also be released. For the moment, Office 2024 will be presented as a preview starting next month and Microsoft announces general availability later in the year, without giving further details. If maintaining an autonomous and perpetual version of the most famous office suite is a good thing, the functional and somewhat artificial limitations imposed by Microsoft, on what is by far its flagship product, are regrettable and unfortunately confirm the shift towards all subscription taken by the company, a costly model which makes users particularly captive.