We all laughed when BMW thought it was a good idea to install seat warmers, but charge a subscription fee for people who bought the car to use them, remember?
Seems it’s the Les Horribles that won’t go away.
Baby monitor that used to be free. Now only works with subscription.
Water filter needs an app and $2/mo charge to work
Double over requires an app and sub to enter “air fry” mode
Roomba model that now requires paid subscription
Toyota Navigation doesn’t navigate without payment
Going to the gym? Pay the fee, and then add $2 to open the door
HP Printer locks up unless you agree to “Instant Ink” payments
Garage door opener in Honda doesn’t operate without sub.
$2000 rowing machine require $30/mo add on to operate
Nokia has a phone with Tetris. Doesn’t work without extra payment
Who hasn’t run into “storage full”, extra payment required
Remote start Mazda doesn’t remote start without monthly premium
More Mazda mayhem
Songs on Dance app don’t work without subscription
Laptop wants subscription to be able to be repaired
Microsoft Office, remember?
And a laptop which requires a subscription to play DVDs.
Pretty sad mess, indeed. I/We try to avoid subscription models, but did give in to M$ Office as we rely on it for our various uses, have for ages…
Toyota tries to snag us for the GPS, built in, & remote start, etc., but locked up, so CarPlay & our iPhones get past it… But they only allow one user on their App, or the vehicle access, irritating, for sure..
I did subscribe to SiriusXM on it, but not the F150, again CarPlay on a dongle handles it…
Used to pay for the gym, not lately, but DW does…
And then there’s the TV, some included with the Xfinity package, but then we add on Britbox, AppleTV, Prime, and whatever else slipped in there…
No extended warranties, just deal with whatever breaks…
After MS bricked my copy of MS Office 2010, I refused to pay the $10/month subscription fee. Instead I bought a Microsoft Office 2024 Professional license from some guy in Germany for $29 with can be installed on three computers for “lifetime” use.
If there’s not a way to work around a subscription fee, I’ll usually do without.
I’v looked at those, but resisted going there as the ones I saw didn’t do any updates or bug fixes, what you get is locked in forever. I get, pretty regular updates in the Office 365 subscription, not needed, generally, but some could allow infiltration possibly, or other problems.. I see, when I Check for Updates, it did all the apps on ug 18, and the Updater file itself on Aug 12th… Soit goes.. I think they hit me once a year for $88, it just happens, behind the scenes.. I could just use Apple’s various applications, or OpenOffice, but we both got used to Excel,Outlook, Word in our workdays on PCs and I followed along on our Macs at home.. No Access App in the Mac version, never understood why they didn’t there, but it ws really more in the PC world anyway… I do have the Apple Work package on my Mac, tried its Numbers from time to time, but still fall back to Excel, so flexible, familiar…So there are options, but…
If we follow China into a Great Depression for two years or longer, then this is overengineering and will result in huge financial losses. People will demand that the frills be taken out.
At the risk of jinxing myself; what happened with this? I’ve been running my MS Office 2010 since 2009 without an issue and have installed it on each of my new computers over the decades!
This is an answer to a traditional software problem. Traditionally mini computer software was leased and you paid an annual fee to use it. This gave company income to continue maintenance and improvement of the software.
PCs began software ownership. This required company to constantly upgrade features to force you to upgrade. Otherwise they could not survive and software was orphaned.
Office 365 is an annual fee package. But student grade software is available w/o annual fees but also w/o some advanced features. Works for me. So far no annual fees. But usually they will announce no more support for old versions after some date. Same effect. You may be forced to upgrade especially for updates to avoid cyber vulnerabilities.
When I bought a new computer 2 years ago and loaded my software from the CDrom disk, I got an error saying that the product had been loaded the maximum number of times. MS Office 2010 was still working on my previous 2 computers that I rarely use. I just couldn’t load it on the new one.
The only subscription I’ve become entangled with is Quickbooks. I’ve used the software for around 20 years for my LLCs. Initially bought the software and didn’t buy new/update unless withholding rates changed. Even then could bypass to a certain extent by individually personalizing withholding. Then about 3 years ago, they totally went monthly subscription based. Mark it down as the cost of doing business.
I"m in the Apple Universe for personal computer. All the preinstalled office software and operating system gets free updates as long as the computer hardware can handle it. So get about 10 years out of a desktop before it can’t handle operating system updates. Ditto with iPhone and iPad.
I was able to buy Office for a one time fee, also. I’m thinking it was $120, but that was a couple years ago. Not sure it will be portable if I ever have to get a new machine.
One that irritates me is Photoshop. Adobe switched to subscription-only (I think with Lightroom, also). I have the last version of Photoshop that wasn’t subscription. It’s already more powerful that I need as a hobbyist, so I’m not suffering at all. Pretty sure it was a download, not a CD. That’s another way they’re getting you (i.e. no CD, have to buy a new one…lots of computers don’t even have CD/DVD drives anymore).
Up until they flipped to subscription, I’d generally bought the new Updates as they came along for many years, the Mac versions. At that point I flipped to Elements, dropped PS. In the meantime into today, Apple’e Photos, as well as Apple’s Preview have served my needs foe the bulk of my restorations, fixits, once in a while Elements, but I haven’t updated it in a long time.. Duck n dodge, as needed!
I had to buy a USB CD/DVD unit to access old disks, many old photo backups we thought would be around forever! Same for the old 3-1/2: disks, a USB version, as well, rarely used… Time marches on…
I think with digital downloads (from Amazon and maybe others) you can download it again. I imagine that you’d have to disable on one device for it to work on another