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You can use Microsoft Office apps for free.

It's likely you've needed access to a Microsoft Word document, a PowerPoint presentation or other basic tools from Microsoft 365 at least once -- for either work, school or personal use. Although the software may seem like a necessity, its high price tag makes some people run the other way. If you don't want to spend your money onMicrosoft 365, don't stress. There are a few ways to get the service for free.

Microsoft's suite of productivity software contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. The collectiontypically costsbetween $70 and $100 every year for subscription access across devices and family members (as Microsoft 365). Microsoft also released a new stand-alone version of Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac, called Office Home and Student 2021 -- for a flat price, no subscription required -- on Oct. 5, the same day Windows 11 began its rollout.

Read more:How to download Windows 11 for free

Here are the versions of Office 365, Microsoft 365 and their apps that you can find online for free right now.

If you're a student, teacher or faculty member with an active school email address, you are likely eligible to get access to Office 365 for free through Microsoft, with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams and additional classroom tools.

All you have to do is enter your school email address on this page on Microsoft's website: Get started with Office 365 for free. In many cases, you'll be instantly granted access thanks to an automated verification process. If you attend an institution that needs to be verified, it might take up to a month to confirm your eligibility.

Recent graduates who want to stick with Office 365 can also get Microsoft 365 Personal for $12 for 12 months, with a valid school email address.

Anyone can get a one-month free trial of Microsoft 365 to try it out. However, it does require you to enter a credit card, and if you don't cancel before the month is up, you'll be charged $100 for a one-year subscription to Microsoft 365 Family (formerly called Office 365 Home).

The good news is if you don't need the full suite of Microsoft 365 tools, you can access a number of its apps online for free -- including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Calendar and Skype. Here's how to get them:

Use the browser-based version of the Microsoft Word app for free.

You may be saying, wait a minute -- if I can get all of those apps for free, why pay for Microsoft 365 in the first place? The reason is that the functionality of these apps is limited: They only run in your web browser, and you can only use them when you're online. They also have fewer features than the full Microsoft 365 versions.

There are still a number of benefits, however, including the ability to share links to your work and collaborate in real time, similar to what G Suite tools allow. If you're looking for basic versions of each of these apps, the free version should work well for you.

For more, check out all of the best new features in Windows 11and what you need to know about upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

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Stay current on the latest Microsoft news, plus reviews and advice on Windows PCs.

Read more from the original source:
Yes, you can really get Microsoft Office with Word, Excel and PowerPoint for free - CNET

AWS has improved its free tier for data transfer, from 1GB to 100GB per month for transfer to the internet, and from 50GB to 1TB for CloudFront, its content delivery network.

According to AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr "as a result of this change millions of AWS customers worldwide will no longer see a charge for these two categories of data transfer," which is effective from 1 December.

The free allocation will apply to services such as S3 (Simple Storage Service), web applications on EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) VMs and so on. There is an exclusion for the AWS GovCloud and for China regions.

Other details are that the number of free HTTP and HTTPS requests to CloudFront are to be increased from 2 million to 10 million, and the offer of two million free CloudFront function invocations per month is no longer limited to the first year.

While Barr attributes the change to a "tradition of AWS price reductions" many industry watchers link the price reduction to competition from others, including Cloudflare which in September previewed R2 Storage, which implements Amazon's S3 API but without egress fees.

In July, Cloudflare accused AWS of excessive rates for data egress, stating that customers in North America and Europe pay 80 times what the service costs AWS to operate.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said on Twitter, in response to the AWS news, "Well, that was fast!! I'm doing the dance of joy! Great news for our mutual customers. And the next step toward the inevitable end of cloud egress [fees]."

A customer commented on Hacker News, "I use 500GB1TB per month on Cloudfront, costing about $50100 per month, and I was going to move this over to Cloudflare to take advantage of their savings. However, this AWS change will basically wipe out my entire Cloudfront bill. I should send Cloudflare a Christmas card to say thanks."

It does seem that AWS intends to stop customers bleeding to Cloudflare with this move. There are caveats, though. One is that this is a free tier, so that customers using data transfer beyond these amounts will still pay the high AWS fees. For these users, the free tier becomes a discount. Enterprises for whom content distribution is core to their business will benefit by looking elsewhere. Netflix, for example, built its own CDN connecting to ISPs around the world.

Second, AWS has plenty of other fees to fall back on. S3, for example, charges fees for storage and for API operations such as PUT and GET requests. There are further charges for analytics, Lambda integration, and so on.

Rival storage service Wasabi, which this week announced a new storage region in London, claimed the S3 charges follow a strategy of "make the transaction charges so ridiculously small that customers don't notice, don't care, or can't figure out how to calculate them. Then do this for all of your hundreds of thousands of customers and trillions of objects, and kick back and watch your coffers overflow as time goes by." (Wasabi charges only for storage and claims to be 80 per cent cheaper than S3.)

Cloudflare is not clear on this matter of operation fees, in the context of R2, and said only that "R2 will zero-rate infrequent storage operations under a threshold currently planned to be in the single digit requests per second range. Above this range, R2 will charge significantly less per-operation than the major providers."

Is Prince really celebrating or will Cloudflare worry about R2 losing some of its appeal? Questioned on this matter earlier this month, in an earnings call, Prince said that if AWS were to take egress fees to zero, "it would force us to continue to innovate in that space, just like it would force everyone else to innovate in the space."

Prince also said that interest in R2 was "off the charts". He hopes for Cloudflare to integrate with all the hyperscale public cloud providers and to be "the fabric that connects all of that together."

Go here to read the rest:
AWS chops data transfer fees by massive extension of free tier 2 months after rival previewed R2 Storage - The Register

Nov 25 (Reuters) - British robotics software company Blue Prism (PRSMB.L) has agreed to a 1.22 billion pound ($1.63 billion) final takeover offer from U.S. private equity firm Vista Equity, the parties said on Thursday, topping a proposal from SS&C Technologies (SSNC.O).

The increased 1,250 pence-per-share cash offer from Bali Bidco Ltd, a firm indirectly owned by Vista, comes amid objections from activist investor Coast Capital, which has supported U.S.-based SS&C's proposal.

Bali Bidco said it will fund the deal through existing cash resources.

Register

Blue Prism directors have unanimously recommended shareholders to vote in favour of the Vista deal at meetings scheduled for Dec. 9.

SS&C last week made a 1.16 billion pound takeover approach to the British software firm.

Blue Prism, which counts automaker Daimler (DAIGn.DE), eBay (EBAY.O) and Britain's National Health Service among its customers, initially agreed to be taken over by Vista in September for 1.09 billion pounds. read more

U.S.-based Coast Capital, which holds a stake of around 2.8% in Blue Prism, objected to Vista's proposal, saying the sale process was flawed. Blue Prism defended the deal, saying it was better than continuing as a standalone firm. read more

Shares of Blue Prism ended about 0.6% higher at 1,215 pence on Thursday, before Vista's revised offer was made after the market close.

($1 = 0.7506 pounds)

Register

Reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru, Editing by William Maclean, Kirsten Donovan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Read more here:
UK software firm Blue Prism agrees to Vista's $1.63 bln final takeover offer - Reuters

This story originally appeared on Zacks

The outlook for the Internet-Software & Services industry appears negative going by the estimate revision trend over the past year, driven largely by the pandemic. Some companies were however positively impacted by the pandemic and the rush-to-digitize trend that it gave rise to. The diversity of players in this group is the reason for this dissonance.Being the backbone of the digital economy, its hard to see this industry doing badly over the long term. However, the near-term outlook could have been better. To make matters worse, valuations are going through the roof. Under the circumstances, Criteo (CRTO) and Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN) are the only ones warranting a closer look.

- Zacks

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2 Stocks to Brave the Internet Software & Services Industry - Entrepreneur

Dublin, Nov. 26, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global HMI Software Market 2021-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The publisher has been monitoring the HMI software market and it is poised to grow by USD 1.47 bn during 2021-2025, progressing at a CAGR of 12.31% during the forecast period. The report on the HMI software market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors.

The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by technological developments in HMI software and the usage of analytics among end-user industries.

The HMI software market analysis includes end-user, type, and deployment segments and geographic landscape.

The HMI software market is segmented as below:

By End-user

By Type

By Deployment

By Geographical Landscape

This study identifies the increasing need to improve process efficiency in manufacturing plants as one of the prime reasons driving the HMI software market growth during the next few years.

The report on HMI software market covers the following areas:

The robust vendor analysis is designed to help clients improve their market position, and in line with this, this report provides a detailed analysis of several leading HMI software market vendors that include ABB Ltd., Eaton Corporation Plc, Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, Inductive Automation LLC, Ing. Punzenberger COPA-DATA GmbH, National Instruments Corp., Rockwell Automation Inc., Schneider Electric SE, Siemens AG, and Spectris Plc. Also, the HMI software market analysis report includes information on upcoming trends and challenges that will influence market growth. This is to help companies strategize and leverage all forthcoming growth opportunities.

The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to an analysis of the key vendors.

The publisher presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters such as profit, pricing, competition, and promotions. It presents various market facets by identifying the key industry influencers. The data presented is comprehensive, reliable, and a result of extensive research - both primary and secondary. The market research reports provide a complete competitive landscape and an in-depth vendor selection methodology and analysis using qualitative and quantitative research to forecast the accurate market growth.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Market Landscape

3. Market Sizing

4. Five Forces Analysis

5. Market Segmentation by End-user

6. Market Segmentation by Type

7. Market Segmentation by Deployment

8. Customer landscape

9. Geographic Landscape

10. Vendor Landscape

11. Vendor Analysis

12. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/51mz08

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Global HMI Software Market (2021 to 2025) - Featuring Eaton, Inductive Automation and Siemens Among Others - GlobeNewswire