In the early months of 2019 I purchased an activation key
for Microsoft Office Professional Pro 2019 from SoftwareProWorld.Com,
based in the UK, who claim to be seller of cheap software and claim to
have been in business since 2017. I paid around $50. The price of that
software from SoftwareDepot in Australia, a legitimate seller of
software, is approximately $800.00. The software worked until Thursday
of this week (May 2021) when I received a message from Microsoft that I
had been the victim of software counterfeiting and I needed to purchase
a legitimate version of MS Office.
Microsoft are seeking to entice users to buy a subscription model, with
an annual payment required. Until recently that model included Publisher
and Access, but now to get those software items a Business subscription
is required and the fee is around $250 annually. The cheapest version is
around $90 annually.
I purchased a legitimate version of Microsoft Office Home and Student
2019 from SoftwareDepot for $96.80. I don’t wish to purchase an annual
subscription. This entitles me to Word and Excel, but not Publisher or
Access, which I have never used anyway.
I was obviously stupid for dealing with a dodgy UK company, but at least
I have not lost any of my work on my computer. I should have taken
notice of the old saying if the price is too good to be true it probably is.
Of course there are free alternatives to Microsoft software, like
LibreOffice, which includes a word processor, a calculator package
similar to Excel, and a database similar to Access, but I chose not to
install these. There is also the Linux operating system, but it is not
widely used.
