Gadgetory

pay more for amazon prime but save on office 365 I'm Bridget Carey and this is your see Annette update the day we all feared has arrived amazon announced that prime will cost 100 dollars a year that's a twenty dollar price increase for the subscription service it includes free two-day shipping on most of Amazon's items plus access to free shows on Prime instant video and free ebooks in the kindle lending library the student rate also increased but that's just fifty dollars a year this is the first time the price increase since Prime launched in 2005 fuel and transportation does cost more but Amazon may also need more cash when competing with Netflix to provide more quality shows for its video service if you sign up for prime by April seventeenth you can lock in the original $80 cost for one more year everyone else will have to pay more when their account comes up for its yearly renewal prime is still a pretty good deal if you could take advantage of the perks if you just look at prime as a way to stream some TV shows and movies amazon costs three dollars more than one year of Netflix or Hulu Plus but say you don't care about the free shows and you don't have a kindle so you don't care about the free books you need to take a look at your ordering history to see how much you would have paid in shipping my cnet update blog has a few links to help you figure that out but you can also prolong the price hike paying for one more year you buy an amazon prime subscription now as a gift but you gift it to yourself and you have the delivery date be when your current membership expires turn off the auto renew and tada you just saved twenty dollars on prime by paying for it ahead of time but as one subscription service price goes up a few others drop Microsoft has a cheaper option for accessing the suite of office programs coming soon is office 365 personal it costs seventy dollars a year and you can only install office on one computer and one Windows tablet if you need more devices spend a hundred dollars on office 365 home that lets you install it on up to five computers & 5 smartphones the google drive storage prices also dropped everyone gets 15 gigs of free storage but if you need more 100 gigs of storage now costs two dollars a month instead of five dollars a month some folks may be itching to get a Fitbit but others are just itching from their fitbit's Fitbit is offering a full refund for its force activity tracking wristband after more than 10,000 users complained of developing allergic reactions and skin irritation from the strap the 130 dollar fitness bracelet was the first Fitbit to come with a screen that's your tech news update but you can find more details at cnet com / update from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey