# How Microsoft Turned My Copilot Enthusiasm Into Copilot Fatigue

- Link: https://legawa.com/teknologi/how-microsoft-turned-my-copilot-enthusiasm-into-copilot-fatigue/
- Published: 2026-07-04T21:57:56+07:00
- Author: Cahya

I still remember where I was when ChatGPT first went viral. As a doctor who also
happens to be a writer chasing xianxia plots and archaic Indonesian diction late
at night, I saw immediately what large language models could become — not a toy,
but a genuine creative and professional partner. I wanted to believe Microsoft, 
with its reach into every clinic, hospital, and home office in the world, could 
bring that same magic into the tools I already used every day: Word, Excel, Outlook.

For a while, it looked like they might.

## The Good Years: Copilot Pro as an Option, Not an Obligation

When Microsoft introduced Copilot Pro, the pitch was simple and fair. You paid a
clear price, you got AI woven into your Office apps, and — crucially — you could
switch it on or off as a separate subscription. If a month was busy with writing
and I needed the extra help, I paid for it. If not, I skipped it. No pressure, no
waste. It respected the fact that AI usage isn’t constant; some months I lean on
it heavily for medical documentation or blog research, other months barely at all.

That flexibility was, in hindsight, the best version of what Copilot could have 
been.

## Then Came the Bundle

Somewhere along the way, Microsoft decided optionality was the problem. Copilot 
got folded into Microsoft 365 packaging, and the pricing followed the AI hype rather
than the actual value delivered. What arrived instead of Copilot Pro’s freedom was
a rigid monthly allotment — a small number of credits bundled into the subscription,
whether you used them or not.

Sixty credits a month sounds generous until you realize how quickly ordinary tasks—
summarizing a report, drafting an email, cleaning up a spreadsheet — burn through
it. Worse, most of what those credits accomplished was already achievable with the
free tier of Copilot Chat. I was paying more for something that didn’t meaningfully
outperform what I already had for free.

## Pay More, Get Less (Unless You’re the Account Owner)

It gets more frustrating from there. Microsoft’s higher-priced bundles do offer 
unlimited Copilot use across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook — but only for
the primary account holder on a Family subscription. Everyone else sharing that 
plan, including my own family members, simply doesn’t get Copilot access at all.
It cannot be shared, no matter how the household actually uses the subscription.

Compare that to Google One, which extends its Gemini AI features to every member
on a shared family plan, at a similar price point. For a household like mine — where
more than one person might want to draft something, translate something, or get 
a quick AI assist — the difference in philosophy is stark. One company treats a 
family plan as a household. The other treats it as one paying customer and several
bystanders.

## The Real Problem: Everyone Else Is Just Better

Here’s the part that stings the most as someone who uses AI daily for both fiction
and medical work: Claude, DeepSeek, and other models — many of them free — simply
produce better output than Copilot does. Drafting prose, reasoning through a clinical
quality document, restructuring an argument — the difference in quality is not subtle.
Copilot, wrapped in Microsoft’s biggest software franchise, ends up feeling less
like artificial intelligence and more like artificial stupidity next to what’s freely
available elsewhere.

And Microsoft’s marketing hasn’t helped its case. Rather than showing concrete, 
significant work Copilot enables — the kind of workflow transformation worth paying
for — most of what reaches the public feels like polished gimmicks in YouTube promo
videos. Impressive demos, forgettable substance.

## Paying for Credits You’ll Never Use

This is where the frustration becomes personal. Microsoft 365 Family subscribers
are effectively charged more for those 60 monthly credits, credits that can’t be
shared with the very family members the plan is supposed to serve. If nobody else
in the household can touch them, and the primary user doesn’t burn through them 
anyway, what exactly am I paying for?

## Why I’m Reconsidering Years of Loyalty

I’ve been a Microsoft 365 subscriber for years. It was never a hard decision before—
Office apps, OneDrive storage, and a reasonable price made it an easy yes. But the
Copilot bundling policy has genuinely shaken that. I’m now seriously considering
canceling the subscription altogether, and the only real friction left is practical:
finding a good place to move my family’s files currently sitting in OneDrive.

It’s a strange position to be in. Not because Microsoft failed to build good AI —
every company is racing on the same curve, and stumbles happen — but because the
way they chose to package and price it has actively worked against the goodwill 
they’d built with long-time users like me. Instead of Copilot becoming the reason
to stay, it’s become the reason I’m looking at the exit.

Microsoft had a real chance to make AI feel like a genuine upgrade to a subscription
I already trusted. Instead, the bundling policy has done the opposite — it’s ruined
my expectations of what Microsoft could have been in this AI era.