How Bing Points turned me onto Office 365

Posted by cci34900 on Jun 13, 2022 in Uncategorized | Comments Off on How Bing Points turned me onto Office 365

When Microsoft Office 365 (subscription based software) came out, most people (including I) were against it. Why not just purchase the software once and never have to purchase it again for at least a few more years? For me, the decision was easy, buy the standard software (Home & Business) and avoid paying monthly (or yearly). Then something changed.

Microsoft Bing gives you points if you search with Bing. For a while, I was collecting points to get xbox rewards for my sons to use. Then one day, I had enough points for 1 year of 1TB of OneDrive storage. I figured, eh, why not. If this was on here the following year, I’ll keep getting 1TB of OneDrive storage for free for years. For those of you who don’t know, OneDrive is Microsoft’s version of “Dropbox”. Just like dropbox, cloud storage, you can get OneDrive storage for free, but it’s only 5gb. You have to pay to get 1TB of storage.  One year, the reward to get 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage was removed and I was in a dilemma… Do I purchase OneDrive, or transfer everything to Dropbox and pay them? Or heck, even switch to Google Drive.

So I opened up Excel and did a price comparison.  Currently, Google is $20 per month for 1TB of cloud storage ($240/yr) 1 user, Dropbox is $9.99 per month ($119.88 per year) for 2TB of storage 1 user or $16.99/mo ($203.88/yr) for up to 6 users to share 2GB of cloud storage. Here’s where it gets interesting. Microsoft Office 365 Personal (1 user) offers the latest Office suite (always updated) & 1TB of OneDrive storage for $69.95 per year (Canton Computers pricing) or if you broke it down $5.83 per month. Or you can go with Microsoft Office 365 Family which is $99.95 per year ($8.33 per month) for 6 users. Here’s the kicker. All 6 users get their own 1TB of storage. It’s not shared like Dropbox.

The way I looked at it, I was getting the cloud storage I wanted (AND NEEDED) for cheaper than the other two services, AND I received MS Office for free. Office 365 was the clear winner here (if 1TB suites your needs). I like free!