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[palmboy5]

You're signing on to use their servers for the foreseeable future, it's literally a subscription service.

[2005]

Subscription based services are actually a lot more healthy, for both the providers and the consumers.

The people who create or offer the service/good now have a steady stream of income, instead of a single one time
purchase. The people who use those goods or services can now use at their own discretion. If at any point, the product
or service begins to falter in quality, the end user can simply cancel their subscription. You'll usually always have the
latest version of the software, normally always have support for that software, and so on. The provider is is now
motivated to fix any blaring issues, where as before they already had your money. Once they have your money, they
are a lot less inclined to do anything further. That's why pre ordering games can be a bad thing. If you pre order, you
give them your money upfront. If too many people pre order, they may start to factor in what potential "new" business
their might be when deciding to go back around to fix bugs or expand content.

The pay for it once and never again model really doesn't work well in a lot of cases. For something like a VPN, you'd have
to pay quite a hefty up front fee. Otherwise the service provider loses badly, and can't continue to offer that service.

[Directive]

Then why is Microsoft office all of a sudden a subscription service? I just want to buy office and be done with it.

[palmboy5]

If we're getting into a discussion about billing paradigms...

My point doesn't dive that deeply. A VPN service means you are maintaining constant connection(s) to their servers, continuously costing them money over a long period of time. Of course you would have to continuously pay them for their continuous cost. One time fee for a VPN service makes no sense. As a super similar analogy, paying your ISP has never been a one time fee and no one bats an eye because it makes sense.

As for Microsoft Office, they're adding a lot more cloud functionality, synchronizing your documents between devices, which uses their servers, which again is a continuous cost on them to serve you. Fact is that you may not ever want to even use those cloud features though, so ultimately for this case they just want your money and have an excuse to move to a subscription model.

[Directive]

#1 My complaint was my wallet, not their charging strategies. I realize they need to charge accordingly but that doesn't change the fact that it would be another $60 to $80 I have to shell out. I live paycheck to paycheck, every dollar counts.

#2 I am that person who doesn't use cloud services. I'll have to live with sucking for a while.

Added 5/4/17

What is the consensus on Kaspersky? I have the Anti-Virus and now using Kaspersky Secure Connection. It has a 200MB limit unless I pay another $30 per year for unlimited. Just want to get opinions before paying.

[palmboy5]

Never heard of it, but sounds like its a VPN service. How fast is it?

Some considerations:
1) You'd have to set it up on each computer, but would you have to pay $30/year for each computer?
2) Does it support smartphones? Do they also cost $30/year each?

With a VPN service and a router that both support OpenVPN, you can setup the router to connect to the VPN service as one connection and all your computers and phones will be protected on the LAN.

[Directive]

That cost would cover 5 PCs. Says I am originating from Canada. Not sure about mobile devices. I really don't do much with data on my phone. I pay for 4GB per month mobile data with carryover. Ever since month #2 I have had about 6GB total to work with. Well, this is between me and my wife, 2 phones shared data. We also never connect to any unsecured wifi.

[2005]

As far as the subscription model goes, it just makes more sense for a business for all the reasons I listed above your question of why is office going to subscription based models.

Yes, they do end up getting more money out of you in the long run. But you always have the latest version of the software, you should technically always have support from the
provider, and you get access to thing (which most of the office "goodies" you don't use).

I think you can still purchase office 2016 as a one time pay model, but after that it's probably all going to be O365 (subscription based) in the future. You only real option is to stay
with Office 2016 or any other older non subscription based version, or move on to something like LibreOffice if you can and are willing. It's free. Again, I understand your concern
with the increase in cost. While I make good money, I don't have a lot of disposable income and I'm a person who likes to get the most for his dollar. I hear you on the 8$ a month
sucking compared to the one time fee of $149. Office 2010 still functions just fine for me, although it doesn't play nicely on windows 10. On a Win 7 rig, I'm no better off with Office
2016 then I am with Office 2010. Just that the $149 for that was spent seven years ago. My monthly cost for that version would be $1.77 a month assuming I got it for $149.

As far as VPN services go, I think you just need to know what your goals are. Most who go with them want privacy, or access to things that they aren't allowed due to where they are
located within the world. If yours is privacy, really heavily consider your option. Many VPN options are not that good at keeping your traffic really anonymous. If you want to get a good
rundown on those that have the highest levels of privacy, research the popular VPNs used by those who pirate stuff.

I probably wouldn't use Kaspersky if privacy was the goal. You probably have to pay with a form of payment that easily tracks back to you, and that alone really destroys your shot at
your activity really being private.

[Directive]

Kaspersky can be set so I am coming from just about anywhere in the world. I just want to hide activity from my ISP. Right now I haven't purchased anything. What form of payment do you suggest is untraceable? PayPal? Just wondering. The only issue Kaspersky has is Outlook 2016 will not send email while active. Will I have that issue with any VPN?

Added 5/20
http://www.consumerreports.org/net-neut ... ethod=auto

[2005]

Untraceable basically equals cash. Anything you can pay cash for.

Paypal ties back to you in at least two major ways, the email address used to set up the account and any financial information you put into that system be it credit/debit cards or bank account numbers. Paypal is an easy lane right back to someone.

Some VPN services allow you to pay with something like a prepaid visa "credit" card. Those that you find at gas stations or dollar stores, they come in like increments of $25, or $50 and you do not have to provide any identifying information when buying them. The key is to pay cash when you buy them. Don't pay for them with a debit or credit card.

The VPN, if it's a good one that doesn't do any logging, will keep your traffic anonymous.... paying for the service in cash will keep you anonymous. If you could 100% trust that the VPN truly kept your traffic anonymous, and untraceable and they didn't log any of the activity... then you wouldn't need to worry about the form of payment.

As far as outlook goes, are you trying to pull down regular webmail (yahoo, hotmail) or something like a company email that is probably set up on microsoft exchange?

[Directive]

Plain ol email with my ISP. I have Gmail but I only use outlook for my ISP, "username".nycap.rr.com email.

Them prepaid cards, Visa, Mastercard, AE, you get are a ripoff. Fee's and dollar amounts left over that can't be used or withdrawn. Screw that.

[palmboy5]

Most VPN services will take Bitcoin as well. You can feed money into Bitcoin and from that point onward what you spend those Bitcoin on will be untraceable (ideally).

[2005]

If you wind up paying any fees they will be very small.

Your likely to be buying VPN services year at a clip (I would) and for the ability to pay for a VPN
service, in cash, and be done with it for an entire year, while knowing payment method isn't going
to be the reason your traffic comes back to be trackable to you... well to me that's worth a few
dollars in fees. Average it out over the twelve months, comes out to 50 cents or so per month added
to the cost of the VPN.

I think I've seen some at local gas stations where the $50 card has an upfront fee of so much...like 2 or 3$.
Say your VPN service will be $65 a year... try get one for $75 and just spend the rest on something at a local
grocery store or gas station.

If your really concerned with keeping your traffic anonymous, that's very small potatoes to be paying.

The only problem with BitCoin is changing your money into the btc initially. I don't know if there is a way
of doing that anonymously, but if say for example you use your checking account to fund the btc... that
is a point of linking back to you. If at any time they can trace the bitcoins, they come back to a bank account
either when they were bought or sold. That leads to you.

[palmboy5]

I've enabled SSL with a legit certificate and forced HTTPS on this site.

Hope it works for you guys still, not that I would know if it doesn't (since you wouldn't be able to see this )

Someone reply to indicate it works or I'll re-enable HTTP in a week!

[I7Iz490N]

lol