Ask Paul: March 2 (Premium)

Welcome to March! Here's a new batch of Ask Paul questions...
Office 365 vs. Office 2016/2019
Norboii asks:
Today I noticed that the loading screen of the Office 365 applications have been changed. Now it no longer shows "Word 2016". But is shown as Office 365. With the Microsoft Logo in the top left, which I also noticed on the iOS Office apps.

Is this change part of Microsoft wanting to further differentiate Office 2019 with Office 365 in the future?
This is part of the February 2018 updates to Office 365, so if you're not seeing it yet, you can update Office manually from any Office 2016 app by navigating to File > Account and selecting "Office Updates." I am seeing it as well, but it disappears so quick I've had trouble capturing it.

What this is identifying, really, is a fragmentation in Office, since there are really now two "versions" of the Office 2016 desktop applications (as there will be for Office 2019): The version you get if you buy Office (or any individual application) outright, or what Microsoft calls a "perpetual license," and the version you get if you subscribe to Office 365. Actually, it's even worse than that: There are different capabilities available in these apps depending on which type of Office 365 subscription you have. For example, some features are only on commercial versions, and not consumer.

If you go back and look at the article about the February 2018 updates to Office 365, you'll see what I mean: The new Word features all require an Office 365 subscription. If you don't have such a subscription, you won't get these features. That new Editor overview pane, for example, replaces the old spell check pane ... but only if you have an Office 365 subscription. In this case, consumer or commercial.

In many ways, this is the modern version of "lipstick on a pig," where Microsoft used to subtly update the Office UI with each release so that someone looking over the shoulder of a user could tell which version it was. Here, someone looking over your shoulder can tell the same, but at app launch time.
BBS
wolters asks:
Were you active in the BBS days and if so, do you sometimes miss those interesting days? Did you ever run your own BBS?
I was active on BBSes back in the day, and I was a contributor. But I never hosted my own.

My big memory here was that when we moved to Phoenix in 1993, I wanted to become active in the developer community there so I found a great developer-focused BBS. But before that, I was on Amiga-focused BBSes like Fidonet as well. This was 1989-1993 or so. My first modem was for my Commodore 64, and I'm sure that was pretty BBS-based stuff, but I can't remember. Mid-1980's, I think.
Outlook.com Premium re-subscription
Simard57 asks:
I received the renewal notice for outlook.com [Premium] but I am unsure the need to renew. I do have a custom domain from MS that I use but I am unsure what MS plans are for the future use of this as I do not recall receiving any noti...

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