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Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester
An anonymous reader writes "A Forrester Research report has found that companies use Microsoft Word for word processing out of habit rather than necessity and are beginning to consider other alternatives as the Web has changed the way people create and share documents. The report, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: The Microsoft Word Love Story," by analyst Sheri McLeish, suggests that businesses may still be using Word because it is familiar to users or because they have a legacy investment in the application, not because it is the best option."
Microsoft surely knows that some other options are creeping slowly into the view of even the most Word-centric users, though. User I dream about smoking writes "Microsoft is testing new capabilities for Office Live Workspace, its online adjunct to Microsoft Office, that will make it a closer rival to online application suites such as Google Docs. Microsoft will start beta testing an updated version of Live Workspace later this year that allows users to create and edit new documents online."
Here's a video explanation of why you shouldn't e-mail documents. I completely agree with it. Creating twenty-five copies of the same document at various revisions is an error-prone habit.
Put identity in the browser.
... 100% compatible ...
Shee-yit, Word isn't 100% compatbile with Word documents ! I frequently need to 'repair' Word 2007 documents before I can re-open them. This of course begs the question, if Word can repair it, why doesn't it just open it ? This question is left as an exercise for the reader.
Personally I wouldn't trust important documents to stay on the web server. What happens when google goes belly up and starts shutting down their web servers?
You are aware that all Google Docs can be backed up locally with Google Gears and also converted into a number of popular formats?
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
Can I just add a [citation needed] to that "history of easily folding to law enforcement" statement? Last time I checked, they fought harder than Yahoo or Microsoft when they were subpoenaed for search data.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
Which is different from bribing the disgruntled sys-admin at the company, how?
In many cases even a underpaid, undervalued, overworked EDS 1st line worker can have access to very sensitive data on the customers servers and PC's. I certainly did back in the days when I worked/slaved for them.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Yes you can, Gears will sync the two whenever the link becomes available again - meaning you can edit your docs on the plane, bus, with or without connectivity, etc.
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
Doesn't Open Office support .doc files and Times New Roman font?
No, not like that, the Google-Apps (writer, spreadsheet, etc.) are downloaded to your PC and you use them from there. So it's still the same mini-office suite that it is on-line and you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference (that is; the move from on-line to off-line mode is seamless). Or you can still just use them through a browser from any PC like you always did. MS/OO/3rd party tools don't come into it.
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
They have a history of easily folding to law enforcement, which makes me uneasy about hosting corporate stuff online.
Actually, I remember google being the ONLY web search company that stood up to the DOJ when they wanted all search data from a random sampling of users. The DOJ was arguing the constitutionality of some "think of the children" legislation about blocking on the internet...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?