There’s a new Office coming in 2024. No, not that one. Microsoft has a new standalone Office 2024 software suite out in the wild that lets you trade in a monthly subscription for a once-off payment. It’s at least double the cost going in the door but it’ll work out cheaper in the long run.
But you should be aware going in that you won’t get any of Microsoft’s nifty new Copilot features with your document software. That’s got us eying the basic priced package with interest but if you’re hoping to use the software for “commercial purposes” and sending emails, you’ll pay a little extra.
The Office 2024
Office 2024 offers locked-in-time versions of Microsoft’s most popular office software. MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are offered in the basic package, Office Home 2024. That one is R2,300 as a once-off purchase but you’ll notice a glaring omission. Outlook isn’t included.
For that, users must pay a much steeper R6,100 for Office Home and Business 2024 but you’re not just gaining access to software Microsoft lets you use for free via your web browser. No, you also gain the “rights to use the apps for commercial purposes”, meaning you can use them on your work computer. For work things.
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Both licenses are for a single user on a single PC (or Mac) and what you get is… what you get. The last version of Office was Office 2021. Office 2024 includes all of the updates to the software suite since then but that’s where the feature updates end. Real-time collaboration is out and so are any Copilot AI updates or any other features that might be introduced into Office 365 before Microsoft ends support for this package.
Which, yes, already has a termination date. Office 2024 loses update support on 9 October 2029. You’re not so much buying the software as renting it for five years. Unless you still use Windows 10, in which case the support shelf-life is even shorter. Support for Office 2024 ends when Microsoft’s support for that operating system ends, in October 2025. You can still use both the OS and the Office suite beyond that point but any faults become entirely your problem.