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Solo to small shop owners question
I imagine this is a silly question. But what Microsoft office software do y’all run. We are getting a new this century computer soon it is being shipped. Do yall go with the office 365. The home student version business etc. Unfortunately we have just always had the home version. But as I am putting our farm business on this and possibly future survey business was wondering just how everyone else does this. I had a lot of help in making sure the laptop would be working with cad programs and point clouds and various survey software. Now trying to look at things like Microsoft office for word excel adobe bluebeam or other alternatives as well.
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26 Replies
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I am allergic to subscriptions for software, so I use LibreOffice to have an entirely free and open-source office option. For PDF I use Foxit perpetual license. I also use Wave (cheaper but still a subsciption) instead of Quickbooks and Carlson instead of C3D for this reason.
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Thanks I will look into that. Is it compatible with excel and word docs. I am asking as I do still help several friends across the country and often get excel and word docs for information to read through or create custom reports with the math formulas in excel for them. Since my old dinosaur of a laptop finally bit the dust I have had to take pics of notes on paper so they could perform these tasks or try and walk them through over the phone.
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Microsoft Office is the standard office suite out there on the market. While I have the full package installed, I rarely use anything other than outlook email, MS Word and Excell but, at least I have the other modules if I need them.
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I see Microsoft has now gone to everything as a monthly payment plan. Good grief. I guess gone are the days of actually owning something. Might be time to do like @No_Target and choose something else. I guess everything has been migrating slowly to this. I have several people I know that just lease vehicles for personal use. Hard pill for me to swallow . Many farmers are doing the same. Times have changed for sure.
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When I started my business back in 2010 I bought the latest version of Carlson and wanted ACAD to be my CAD platform. I did not want to pay the high cost for ACAD so I went on eBay and bought the previous version with the authentication key number that originally came with the program CD. It worked well for the four years before I sold my business.
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I just looked on eBay and you can get the full version of MS Office 2021 Professional for less than $100, it comes with the activation key.
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I will look into that. Thanks. I have been looking at Carlson on intellicad along with Traverse PC as well. I probably need to buy civil 3d and learn that but might run the demo version or trial version at some point.
I will probably buy Trimble Business Center because I help troubleshooting a lot of data and been helping make custom reports for some friends over the years. But they all are moving to subscription based it seems as well.
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Everything in LibreOffice looks and acts like Microsoft Office from about 5 years ago. So excel, .docx, ppt, etc all work just fine and can be converted and used. I have had minor issues opening docx at times but usually very minor.
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Its called SAAS and it is death by 1,000,000 cuts when everyone is charging you $10/mo for one thing or another.
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I use LibreOffice for everything *except* my business database, which I started in MS Access in 1993. For some reason the LO database app (Base) struggled with it, and since I depend on that to run my business I bit the bullet and bought a standalone copy of Access the last time I upgraded operating systems. It’s a perpetual license, and the one-time cost was about $150.
Other than that, I’ve found LO to be very compatible with MS Office. I can convert between the two easily, and have had no complaints from clients about the .doc and .xlsx files I send. I don’t use the presentation app as much, but it’s worked fine when I do.
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Hey thanks. I started looking at the LO on my phone after @No_Target mentioned it. Who knows which direction we will go in once the computer arrives and the wife is back home. But I am trying to plan ahead for sure.
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lol I believe you. We get nickeled and dime by everything now days. Everything seems to go to a monthly charge. Which is difficult for someone that has spent his whole life paying himself to save up to buy something when I wanted it
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As with any software….it depends. What are you needing to do with the software. If it’s just email, word a spreadsheet you can probably go the cheap way. I personally couldn’t fathom doing that, just buy Office 365 and be compatible with literally every other company or agency you deal with? People will spend hours of time to save $200 only to then spend hours of time figuring our how to make it compatible. Just buy the industry standard and get to surveying.
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Well you said it. I am not one to save a nickel when a dollar is on the line. I have passed that phase of cheap tools and then I break some wrench that cost a few bucks now it cost way more when equipment is down and hay is on the ground and I have to drive all over to get a new one. I have slowly got rid or shall I say pawned off some of my cheaper tools over the years. I imagine the same with software. But I am always willing to take a gander at something that will suffice if it saves me money as well.
Being raised poor. One thing my mom never skimped on was shoes for us. We wore clothes from hand me downs to non named brands. But when it came to shoes she only bought the best. By the time we stopped growing she did the same for coats.
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“just buy Office 365 and be compatible with literally every other company or agency you deal with?”
Define “compatible.” I can receive, open, modify and export Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in their native formats without using any MS Office tools. It’s seamless, painless and free.
For a corporate setting, sure, buy Microsoft. But the question was specifically about solo operations, and most of us one-man-shows would much rather bank that monthly subscription fee.
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Another thumbs up for Libra Office. For word processing and spreadsheets, at least. It really doesn’t have an Outlook analog, which is an issue.
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I don’t need an outlook email or am I missing something. I will probably set up a company email on gmail or a .net or something. As of now my farm is on a gmail email address. It’s good to know though that this LO thing has no compatibility issues with clients sending me documents and me sending them the same. It is very apparent that the big companies are doing all they can to centralize and keep the small business in check. But I believe we need more small businesses in every industry for the good OLE USA to thrive.
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Your statement on that monthly fee make me think for sure. There is cost in that. From a business standpoint. Setting up the monthly payments and such. I have no monthly payments except my darn cell phone and mortgage well power. We have well so no water bill. I think the direct tv is monthly that’s on the wife lol. I do hate payments for sure. Just gets old keeping up with all of that mess. Bad enough the yearly taxes and fees on the farm business but it’s what it is.
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“It really doesn’t have an Outlook analog, which is an issue.”
I’ve never used Outlook, so maybe I don’t know what I’m missing. Thunderbird is my preferred desktop email app, and I have it set to forward to Gmail so that I have access to my email when I’m mobile. I also have Gmail set up to use my desktop address as the “from” address, so to clients it all looks like the same thing. But I know some tech business owners who use Gmail exclusively, so that’s always an option.
Again, in a corporate setting buying into the MS environment probably makes sense, but there are no-cost alternatives that work just fine for microbusinesses.
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I have Office365 and I think it’s 100 bucks a year. Always updated and current, which is nice. I think there is a Office365 web version that is free. The Microsoft Onedrive online storage is included also.
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