New Hotmail Integrates Office Features
angry tapir writes "Microsoft is set to begin rolling out the latest enhancements to its Hotmail (warning: interstitial ad) web mail service, with an aim to reduce clutter and make it easier to send photos and handle Office documents. Microsoft is making a Web-based version of Office available from within Hotmail's Web interface that allows use of Microsoft document formats such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote."
where were they up until google did it ? they realized to do this just now ? all they are doing is 'me too' for a long while now.
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I usually use Linux and I want to avoid lock-in. Microsoft Office supports the OpenDocument format, so how about these Microsoft services? And with OpenDocument I mean the Oasis format, not OpenXML (which I don't trust to be suffiently interoperable).
While it's true that Google supports more file types, it shouldn't be unreasonable to assume that Hotmail's integration with MS Office will be substantially more seamless.
Google Docs is still pretty atrocious at handling any formatting quirks of Office file types, and given that MS Office is still the most popular suite to format things in (for better or worse), Hotmail could have a strong selling point above Google in this regard.
*Disclosure* I use Google Docs almost exclusively for my academic and personal needs.
My other sig is clever.