Meeting with the Microsoft Office 365 team, I got the feeling that I was their perfect target market.  I run the household, use many different brands of technology and need a better and more efficient way to do it all.  They spoke of Canadian families’ frustrations about not being able to use programs across different platforms and how frustrating it is when calendars can’t sync, or numbers and financial data aren’t easily accessible.  We are a new generation – multitasking and managing life from multiple locations.   We manage caregivers, aging parents and our kids.  We have great communication with teens with the advent of texting.  Grandparents are on Facebook and Skype, and people learn better English with the help of autocorrect.  (sometimes!!)  We need to be productive and connected between all different devices at home and in the office, on PC and Mac.

With the new Office 365, Microsoft has solved a ton of issues for families and I am pretty impressed.

The rundown:

* Includes the latest and most complete set of Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access
* One license for the entire household to use Office on up to five devices
* An additional 20 GB of SkyDrive cloud storage, three times the amount available with a free SkyDrive account
* 60 free Skype world calling minutes per month to call mobiles, landlines or PCs around the world
* Future upgrades, so you always use the latest time-saving technology
* Automatic save to SkyDrive, so your documents — and even your personal settings — are always available from virtually anywhere and on your favourite devices
* As you will have a microsoft acct, you get 60 mins/mth of skype long distance free
* At CA$99.00 for an annual subscription, Office 365 Home Premium costs the equivalent of CA$8.25 per month.