Today brings the somewhat unsurprising news that Microsoft intend to release a new version of their Office suite next year. While those that subscribe to Office 365 receive constant incremental updates (including this version when it is available), this is the first standalone version since Office 2016 was released in 2015 (yes - the year on the product is always after the year it's actually released).
This may be good news for those that had assumed that Microsoft are concentrating all their efforts on their cloud version of Office now. This means that there will be at least one more major release of the one machine / one permanent licence "boxed" version of the suite that doesn't involve signing up to an ongoing monthly subscription.
Details on the changes are thin on the ground so far. Better tablet support, improved animation in Powerpoint and new formulas in Excel are among the initial list of improvements. A more extensive list of enhancements will be announced closer to the release date. Of course, as we all know, the reality will be that you'll use none of the new stuff, and they'll hide away the one feature you use all the time!