As a consequence of moving on from working for the University, I’ve got to replace a couple of bits of software that came with the job. One is Sophos, which is a pretty good anti-malware product and as cutting edge as anything out there, so I got Sophos Home Premium installed for me and Jane yesterday. The other is Microsoft Office.

Microsoft are not the corporate bad guys they were a couple of decades ago – indeed, they are now major contributors to Open Source products, they’ve made it possible to run Linux within Windows and there doesn’t seem to be an evil plan behind it all (probably driven in part by the fact that they are no longer the dominant force in the server market and there are plenty of viable desktop alternatives too). Microsoft Office is a pretty good product all told – it has its quirks but it works well and has a good assortment of power features.

Left just to my own devices, I’d probably look at alternatives or just stick with the Google products like Docs and Sheets. However, Jane wants to hang onto Office, not least so she can keep practiced and current for future jobs. Fair enough – I’ve put down £79.99 for a year’s subscription to Office365 and we’ll see how that goes once it finishes downloading.

That isn’t the number that caught my eye though – it is the pre-VAT price of £66.66. Number of the beast? Hopefully not…