What is this LTSC scam? (1 Viewer)

[prabha_friend]

"vprozone.in"
Ms Office is sold at dead cheap prices here. How come? I have bought some earlier. but thought of verifying with our experts here. Trustworthy?
ps:
Which is the official way to get Ms office cheap. I am planning to purchase 10 licenses.1 for Myself and the other 9 for my clients. Running short of money. So cheapest would be preferred.

 

[Pat Hartman]

1. Your clients need to pay for their own subscriptions.
2. For yourself, you can get 6 personal use subscriptions for $99 per year ($89 at Costco) or $69 for one. I don't know if the price is different in different countries.
3. MS doesn't discount its prices so sites that do are scams. Do NOT purchase one of these for your clients. There could be liability issues. Do what you want for yourself. Whatever your ethnics allow.

 

[prabha_friend]

1. Your clients need to pay for their own subscriptions.
2. For yourself, you can get 6 personal use subscriptions for $99 per year ($89 at Costco) or $69 for one. I don't know if the price is different in different countries.
3. MS doesn't discount its prices so sites that do are scams. Do NOT purchase one of these for your clients. There could be liability issues. Do what you want for yourself. Whatever your ethnics allow.

for Ms Access part I can cover using the Ms Access Runtime. But for word, Excel and Outlook (I use it through COM to make complex format reports and Excel for other analyses and Outlook for contact management and other contact or Event related tasks).

 

[Pat Hartman]

The client STILL needs to pay for his own Office subscription.

 

[prabha_friend]

The client STILL needs to pay for his own Office subscription.

You are right but cannot be justified in India (They count the PC Making charges as also a Software Investment Cost only). They don't know what is a software then only computer.

 

[Pat Hartman]

But they get to use the MS software for other purposes. Having the correct supporting software is the same as having the correct hardware. If they are not willing to pay for their own Office solution, don't offer Office automation. You can send email without Outlook. You can print letters without Word. You can export .xlsx files and they can open them with free software. You can actually create documents in .rtf format which act like word documents and can be processed by all the current document systems. I've done this from COBOL on a mainframe so you can easily do it with Access as long has you understand the basic formatting commands. If you can't find the current .rtf spec online, I can upload an old version. It probably hasn't changed much.

To see what .rtf looks like in plain text, create a document and save in that format. Then open it with a text editor. You will see all the text and it will be surrounded by formatting commands. There will be a lot of unnecessary junk at the beginning of the document but you can ignore most of that once you understand what it is.

 

[Isaac]

I get any and all MS Office type of products from softwarerepairworld.com.
Especially if you're willing to go 'back' at least a handful of years, which I always am and in fact prefer to never have the newest software - you can usually get stuff for $20, $25, $35 for good bundles of Office say 2019 and thereabouts.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I think @Isaac the link is broken? It tries to open Outlook when I click it.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

My Office 2021 Pro installation was bought through a company using LTSC - Long Term Service Channels. Up to 5 machines, cost about $40. I still get updates of Office. My licenses were verified because I was able to activate the products online. However, you have to jump through a couple of hoops to get the individual Office-member icons on your desktop.

It isn't a scam. Things are cheap because usually they are selling older versions. The latest version will be high-priced anywhere. However, once MS stops selling a version because a newer version is out, the prices of software sold from Value-Added Resellers drops like a stone. A long time ago I worked for a company that was a VAR for Digital Equipment Corp. We sold DEC machines and the RSX-11M O/S. As long as we added our own equipment, specialty software, or 3rd party equipment, we could undersell DEC by a small percentage. Now with Office, VARs can legally sell old stuff until the licenses run out.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Here is the most recent .rtf spec I could find.

 

[Isaac]

I think @Isaac the link is broken? It tries to open Outlook when I click it.

Thanks for letting me know I removed the hyperlink but the address remains