I've heard a lot of people bail on Office once they released the ribbon interface. Believe it or not, I kind of like it. It's one of those things that once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad (and in fact, I personally think it's a bit more streamlined this way).
I hear Office 2013 is going to be very nice. I played with it a little bit already and I enjoyed what I saw. It's blunt obvious that it's designed to integrate very well with Windows 8, which will be very neat to check out (I only tested it on Windows 7).
I did not much care for Office online at all. Google docs is ok, but is lacking in my opinion.
I have played with OpenOffice and it is a very powerful and suitable alternative, that's for sure.
That's both a plus and a minus. When you have a platform that's unfinished -- Google Docs still has a way to go before it matches Office on features -- then incremental, steady improvements are nice. I notice that there's a lot of stuff in there that appeared while I wasn't paying attention and I didn't even know it had.
On the other hand, like you said, if you get to like it a certain way, it can change on you without notice.
And one of the reasons I stopped using Microsoft Office, for example, was the new "ribbon" interface. But there, I think they were just looking for something - anything -- to change so they could justify selling you a new version. Personally, I would have been happy sticking with an old version of Office -- it did everything I wanted it to.
Instead, I switched to OpenOffice, which fits 100% of my requirements for zero percent of the price.
From the review you have given, I think we will stay with Google. However, we shall be trying our the Microsoft service and see if it gets better enough that we need to switch.
One problem that I have with Google Docs (which I think is great otherwise) is that it changes its interface without notice or recourse. It's a problem with many web apps -- the developers roll out a new set of functions and disregard the users who may have liked how it previously worked. MSFT's Office web apps haven't been around long enough to change too much, but Google Docs has changed dramatically over the last few years. (At one point, it forced everyone to completely change ALL their docs to a new format.)
It's the price you pay to work in the cloud... the cloud can move and shape-shift while you're not looking.. and there's no way to get back your original cloud.
I didn't mention price in my comparison, but the the basic Google Apps for Business platform -- which includes Gmail, Google Docs, and shared calendars, and Google Sites, and Google Voice, and Gchat, etc... etc... is free.
For the Microsoft Web Apps, it's only free for individual users -- all business licenses cost money, either as part of Office 365, or as an add-on to SharePoint.
Personally, I prefer Google Docs. Maria has provided a detailed account of how Google Docs fares with Microsoft's Office Web Apps for Skydrive. I've tried both and find their functionalities are basically up to par. However, I find it easier to use Google Docs as a whole, which is why I'm sticking with it. I guess sometimes, it all comes down to personal preferences.
The online form utility is great in creating the Form for the polls/survey that i need. Moreover there are lot of scripts/codes that are available that I can use directly...
The only place where MS beats Google is the function/formula handling in spreadsheets.
I missed this earlier, but Microsoft's Word Web App *does* have a word count function. It's not under the tools menu, where I remember it from the regular Word. It's in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
At first glance, the World Web App is miles ahead of the Google Doc. It preserves all the formatting! The tables look right! There are footers and watermarks!
Unfortunately, this is just a preview of the document. When you actually open the document for editing (I downloaded it from their demo site, and re-uploaded it to my SkyDrive) all that nice formatting goes down the drain, and it now looks pretty much like the Google Doc version looks.
Now, I understand why Google Docs documents look the way they do -- they evolved slowly, overtime, from basic HTML. And there's only so much you can do with HTML.
Except, these days, you can do a LOT with HTML. And since Microsoft is building their online platform from scratch, they could have added in at least the most useful functions -- the table formatting, the headers and footers, etc...
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
