If you’re Microsoft, why not just make it 100% free? It’s 11 year old software that’s so irrelevant that they can’t be bothered to support anymore, right? What’s the harm?
Oh wait, for 99% of users there is no difference between Office 2010 and Office 365. In fact, the only significant difference I can think of is the pricing model. If the old office were free, there would be almost no reason to use the latest version.
I edited my comment to add the /s to try and make it more clear but I think I made it less clear. Whoops.
I think there are legitimate reasons they don’t give it away for free, like some replies have mentioned. I was trying to draw attention to the fact that Office 2010 works just fine for most use cases, making this activation kerfuffle and Office 365 in general seem even more like a soulless cash-grab.
> When it works, the collaborative editing features are nice.
It rarely works – but it's miles better than “this file has been locked for editing by somebody else”, so I'd still call it an improvement over 2010. (Just not an improvement over its competitors.)
Oh wait, for 99% of users there is no difference between Office 2010 and Office 365. In fact, the only significant difference I can think of is the pricing model. If the old office were free, there would be almost no reason to use the latest version.
Thanks, Microsoft. /s