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LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

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Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#31

Post by douche »

johnchristopher wrote: post #29
douche wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps. The one thing they really need to work on, for me to be super happy, would be their Lync/Skype platform. Either overhaul the old Lync 2013 client…

> I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps. That may be because you only use a subset of Word features ? Have you tried the classic Wordpad ?

Wordpad is kind of in that no-man's-land between NotePad++ and doing heavy-lifting with Word.

Honestly, it it easier for me to slam together an HTML document than it is to fiddle with a WYSIWYG word processor. It's got a higher chance of actually looking like what I want it to, as well.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#32

Post by ucaetano »

andrepd wrote: post #10
ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

>the market it tried to address suddenly became nearly nonexistent Can you give something to back the claim?

I edited my post, my point was that the market for pure offline office productivity suites has become irrelevant, since the competition now is between a pure cloud-based service and a mix of offline and cloud based service :)

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#33

Post by ucaetano »

downtide wrote: post #15
ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

Which market are you referring to? I still crave for a really nice word processor, spreadsheet, and easy database app (in the style of Access). I've always found *Office a bit rough around the edges. My partner recently brought home an iPad from work. Word failed to play well with other (MS Word) Office documents, so file exchange and formats are still a complete pain in the neck. I will be using plain text until som…

I think we can all agree that you're not representative of the market, and to be honest, I'd guess (with no data to back it up) that the majority of readers here aren't as well.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#34

Post by chmars »

pidg wrote: post #16
DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

+1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps work beautifully. Not having to endure emailed-round documents with multiple competing versions like "Report-Dec2015 Draft v5(FP,PL,KM) (2).doc" is worth the price of entry alone. I feel sorry for those like the UK government who've been successfully lobbied…

Which collaboration features?

(Seriously: We use desktop versions of Office apps based on Office 365 but I have not discovered any collaboration features so far. Where are they hidden? Are they compliant with European data privacy and labor law?)

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#35

Post by merb »

pidg wrote: post #30
Majestic121 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously using the "lock in" argument against open standards? Is this a joke? You could not be more locked in than when using the Office 365 suite. It may happen to have some nice feature for now, but there is nothing keeping them from pulling an IE all over again, and you will be completely locked in because of the proprietary format used.

No, not against open standards. Microsoft OOXML is an open format. You might recall it's (controversially) the Ecma, ISO and IEC standard format, and is supported by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. So even if MS did something terrible, the documents would still be editable when everyone switches over to LibreOffice - dependent on how well they've implemented OOXML. And I'm not even against what Collabora are doing, I thi…

OOXML is a broken standard. It is bigger than the PDF spec, which already is ridicoulus. Also some crazy bugs inside older versions aren't always reflected inside the spec. I've seen documents render differntly between Office 2007, 2010, 2013. Mostly between 2010 and 2013 since 2013 is way more correct than the previous versions, still Microsoft use a compability layer to still have a "correct" view.

However that is really really aweful.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#36

Post by pidg »

chmars wrote: post #34
pidg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps work beautifully. Not having to endure emailed-round documents with multiple competing versions like "Report-Dec2015 Draft v5(FP,PL,KM) (2).doc" is worth the price of entry alone. I feel sorry for those like the UK government who've been successfully lobbied…

Which collaboration features? (Seriously: We use desktop versions of Office apps based on Office 365 but I have not discovered any collaboration features so far. Where are they hidden? Are they compliant with European data privacy and labor law?)

I don't know enough about the admin side, but perhaps it's something that needs to be enabled separately. From a user perspective it 'just works' in our office:

If several people open a document shared on OneDrive, that document is opened in a collaboration mode where you can see others working on it, similar to Google Drive.

A menu appears at the bottom of the screen[1] showing who's editing that file. If you have Lync/Skype for Business, clicking on those names opens an IM to that person.

Re privacy, a quick search shows their cloud services are compliant with ISO 27018 as of February this year[2]

(and no, I don't work for Microsoft!)

[1] http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2013/04/who-is-e...

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-adopts-international-...

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#37

Post by RottenHuman »

ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

> replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer

I'm afraid your point is still not clear. What's your metric for declaring a market irrelevant?

A conventional office suite is still the solution which is overwhelmingly dominating the market. Maybe look outside your own bubble and bias. A lot of business will never give away there confidential documents in the hands of third party cloud hosts. (which is the sane approach). So what's your criteria for calling that niche, irrelevant or even non-existent?

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#38

Post by [deleted] »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

[deleted]

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#39

Post by RottenHuman »

ucaetano wrote: post #32
andrepd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the market it tried to address suddenly became nearly nonexistent Can you give something to back the claim?

I edited my post, my point was that the market for pure offline office productivity suites has become irrelevant, since the competition now is between a pure cloud-based service and a mix of offline and cloud based service :)

And why should LibreOffice not be able to integrate a "cloud service" into their suite?

The extension interface of Libre Office even lets me think that this would be technically a triviality to integrate.

Maybe with an open standard instead of a propriety and closed eco system,

with the freedom to choose whom you trust with your data, or to host it yourself.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#40

Post by DiabloD3 »

douche wrote: post #20
DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps. The one thing they really need to work on, for me to be super happy, would be their Lync/Skype platform. Either overhaul the old Lync 2013 client…

They're basically killing Lync and making a combined Skype client that can log into multiple "Skype" accounts, including what Skype for Business is (aka Lync).

Its part of their complete rewrite of Skype (that started with the Windows 10 combined Skype/messaging app that is currently in semi-beta that came out with Threshold 2).

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