Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
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Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
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Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#2Well, interesting. Less features than Google Docs has, but I'm afraid people will like it simply because it looks more like their Office 2007/2010 :(
They'll have much less work than Google Docs in convincing users to use it. meh.
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#3To try them: http://office.live.com/?docsf=1
They are pretty impressive. A bit slow and far from feature complete, but definitely in the same league as Google's suite. If Microsoft keeps their foot on the gas, they may be able to block Google's assault on Office.
EDIT: I heard that they would have support for rendering 100% of offline Office's documents/features. Is that still true? Would those parts of the documents simply be read-only online?
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#4(Disclaimer: I worked on the Word Viewer Web App last summer)
One of the things I think differentiates this from Google Docs, albeit for a small subset of users, is that equations created in the rich client's equation editor are rendered in the viewer (it just so happened the only Word doc I have on Sky drive is a problem set). Most people won't care, but it's pretty nice if you do use it. My pet use case: If you keep your stuff on Skydrive (I don't...yet) and need to print from a non-Windows machine, it's nice not to have to have emailed oneself a PDF generated by the rich client.
Being able to edit the equations would be great, but perhaps unsurprisingly, that's beyond the scope of the 1.0 release.
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#5They're cannibalizing their biggest cash cow just to compete. They must be terrified.
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#6To try them: http://office.live.com/?docsf=1 They are pretty impressive. A bit slow and far from feature complete, but definitely in the same league as Google's suite. If Microsoft keeps their foot on the gas, they may be able to block Google's assault on Office. EDIT: I heard that they would have support for rendering 100% of offline Office's documents/features. Is that still true? Would those parts of the documents…
if they are to implement such a feature, I guess they'll put up a "download IE to use Office Live offline" or some msg of this kind. Like how they made silverlight :)
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#7Well, interesting. Less features than Google Docs has, but I'm afraid people will like it simply because it looks more like their Office 2007/2010 :( They'll have much less work than Google Docs in convincing users to use it. meh.
What are the main features that are missing? for me its the collaboration (docs.com has a 'wall' feature on each document, but not quite as good) but certainly the formatting seems better (or am I missing something on Google Docs? no styles etc)
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#8They're cannibalizing their biggest cash cow just to compete. They must be terrified.
Not really - I expect this will simply replace Works. I would expect that the really big cash cow is large organizations buying a complete set of client licenses (for Windows, Office, SharePoint) through Enterprise Agreements.
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#9They're cannibalizing their biggest cash cow just to compete. They must be terrified.
I'm not sure I agree about the cannibalization. I see the web apps as more of a value-add than a full replacement for Office. I probably wouldn't want to use the Word web app to create an entire document (unless I had no choice), but it's super handy for making edits/fixes from a machine without Office.
Re: Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live
#10Well, interesting. Less features than Google Docs has, but I'm afraid people will like it simply because it looks more like their Office 2007/2010 :( They'll have much less work than Google Docs in convincing users to use it. meh.
What features is it missing?
The main strength of Google Docs is Gmail integration. This is, arguably, more powerful than tighter Office compatibility (which is one reason that Microsoft wanted to do Docs.com with Facebook).