Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.117 2021.09.01 Takahashi Minoru

The annoying Windows Update and its misdeeds

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


I recommend the one-time purchase version of Office.
I do not recommend Office 365 for companies that cannot overcome the following hurdles:


① OneDrive that no one can master
When using Excel or Word in 365,
the "OneDrive" option appears as a save location.
While one or two tech-savvy employees might be able to use it,
for the vast majority of employees, it’s a useless burden.
Unintended syncing, not knowing where files are, not knowing if they’ve been deleted, not knowing how to access them—
—it’s a completely useless service.
Even if you ask the vendor, they’ll just send you a generic FAQ pamphlet in PDF format.


② Licenses No One Can Keep Track Of
The system of one license per five devices (where a license equals a billing unit) seems like a good deal at first glance, but
as the number of licensed devices increases,
it becomes very difficult to determine,
becomes very difficult to determine.
Of course, whether you’re using them or not, the monthly charges will continue indefinitely.
This is one of the problems that wouldn’t arise with a one-time purchase model.


③ Outlook: Unrivaled—in a bad way
Outlook Express and Live Mail were excellent email programs, but
they have been replaced by Outlook.
Attachments that don’t arrive, contacts that won’t show up, mailboxes that disappear—
I have the utmost respect for companies that operate Office support desks.


④ You can’t tell what version you’re running
If the slogan “Always the latest version” is true,
it means that an internal version equivalent to Office 2019 will one day be automatically replaced
without warning.
Depending on how your business systems are built, there’s a possibility they could suddenly stop working one day.


"Spreading the high cost of a one-time purchase over monthly payments" is a very attractive proposition, but
as mentioned earlier, I personally feel that Office 365 is a service that leaves Japanese users behind.
Since even a giant like Microsoft is pushing it, I imagine it’s a huge hit in the U.S.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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