Microsoft Announces Web-Based Office365

suraj.sun writes "Aiming to bolster its hosted software for businesses, Microsoft announced today that it is adding Web-based versions of Office to its collection of hosted software for business, Office365. It will also offer traditional Office as a subscription-based service. Microsoft is pricing the service as low as $6 per user per month, though that version includes only the Web-based versions of Office."

Comments

"Best with IE" or not?

[grub]

It isn't mentioned in the article, but does anyone know if Office365 "works best" with IE or is it browser-agnostic? For example, Microsoft's Outlook Web Access is quite decent when accessed with IE but with Firefox or Safari it's not nearly as nice.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[NewWorldDan]

Nothing more complicated than a "hello world" page is browswer-agnostic.

But it's also a pretty safe bet that it's not a true browser app (I'm not sure what that means), but will be Silverlight based. So on that front, so long as you're running a browser that supports Silverlight, you should get the exact same experiance. There may be more info in TFA, but it's down for me at the moment, so I'm just going to speculate wildly.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Mongoose Disciple]

Their web site claims "Works with the devices you use most - including PC, Mac, Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry" but it doesn't say "Works well".

I'd think it would have to be relatively browser-agnostic to make that claim, but who knows?

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[ickleberry]

if it needs a specific browser to run which only works on a specific operating system they should just have made it a desktop office suite (separate from MS Office even, start from scratch).

This is more of the last few year's trend of making everything web-based just so the company making it can appear to be with the times of having everything web/cloud/subscription based with no real advantage

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Tablizer]

does anyone know if Office365 "works best" with IE or is it browser-agnostic?

If you run it on anything other than IE, it will take 365 days to load. Hence, the name.
   

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[cuby]

If it works well under Firefox it will be good. Office is the one thing I miss on linux... Open Office creates a mess in a workplace were everyone uses MS office.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[MCEscher]

TFA doesn't say, but I watched a Channel 9 video and it certainly looks like Silverlight. That means Microsoft supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE (on Windows, Moonlight isn't near close enough to Silverlight to do this kind of stuff). I do agree with you that the outlook web application was garbage. But now with Exchange 2010, it is excellent. I was quite pleased when I opened up Outlook 2010 web mail in Chrome and it was completely full featured, even the Office Communicator Client integration worked!

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[PCM2]

I reviewed the Web-based versions of Office a while ago for InfoWorld. I was pretty underwhelmed, but browser support wasn't really a problem. Microsoft is officially supporting IE, Firefox, and Safari. In practice, I found Chrome and even Konqueror worked pretty much fine. You get better document rendering and maybe some other goodies if you have Silverlight installed, but it's not necessary.

On the other hand, the functionality you get from Web-based Office is a far cry from what you can do with the desktop versions. The Web-based document viewers are top notch and they render Office docs better than anything else on the market, for any platform (other than Windows Office, obviously). But the editors are completely separate from the viewers and they don't offer much more functionality than Google Docs does.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[cbhacking]

The latest version of Outlook Web Access is pretty browser-agnostic. Previous versions were not, that's true.

Office Web Apps work fine on Firefox, though they might require having Silverlight installed. I'm not going to touch Safari, thanks.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[ejdmoo]

Hello there! I work on the Outlook Web App team. The version of OWA shipped in Exchange 2010 SP1 is supported in (and works equally well in)...

- IE 7+ (note that IE6 is not supported)
- Firefox 3+
- Safari 3.1+
- Chrome 3+

This is the version of OWA included in Office 365.

Source:
http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/bb899685.aspx

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[hairyfeet]

This brings up something I've been wondering for awhile: What moron killed Works, and why? Yeah I hated the Works file format as much as the next guy, but it was a great way for them to push product to the Walmart crowd and OEMs. If anybody there had a brain they'd take Word, Powerpoint, and Maybe OneNote, and package that as "MSFT Office Home" and push that in the low end market and to OEMs instead of more "Web 2.0" crap. Lets be honest folks, this is probably gonna bomb, and bomb hard. Those that need MS Office are probably just gonna pick up a retail edition, and those in the low end without Works being supplied by OEMs is probably gonna end up with Open Office. from a company standpoint this is just further proof in my opinion that Ballmer is to MSFT what the Pepsi guy was to Apple and needs a good firing.

And slightly OT, but can we change the "Bill Gates Borg" icon please? yes Bill was good at the "evil Nerd Genius" thing, but has been gone for ages. I would like to propose a BETTER icon, which I bet most here would agree is a better description of MSFT currently: Steve Ballmer with his tongue sticking out with a propeller beanie and a "I heart Apple!" T-shirt. This would better describe the current direction (which is pretty much "We can be as cool and hip as Apple! Yes we can! Yes we really can! STOP LAUGHING AT ME"!) and the "me too!" attitude at MSFT, not to mention the piss poor image the CEO brings to the table, better than the MSFT Gates Borg. Hell at least let the guys at /. vote in a poll on it! Who's with me? Down with Gates Borg, up with Ballmer Beanie!

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it works well under Firefox it will be good. Office is the one thing I miss on linux... Open Office creates a mess in a workplace were everyone uses MS office.

MS Office creates a mess in a workplace were everyone uses MS office - no trolling, opening a really old MS Word document works better with Open Office Writer than with MS Office.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Low Ranked Craig]

+1 on new icon

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Yvan256]

If it really works on iPhone then at least we know it doesn't use Flash or SilverLight.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[kikito]

MS office does not create a mess in a workplace where everyone else uses OpenOffice. But that makes OpenOffice better, not the other way around.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[CarpetShark]

Nothing more complicated than a "hello world" page is browswer-agnostic.

Just "Hello, world" then, in pure ASCII?

Guess that whole HTML and CSS and Javascript standards thing must have been my imagination.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[oatworm]

What moron killed Works, and why?

A bloody genius, that's who. Between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition (only slightly more expensive than Works' retail pricing, not that anyone ever paid for it), Works doesn't make sense anymore, if it ever really did in the first place. Creating a watered down version of Office wasn't a bad idea, mind you, but making it incompatible with Office and pushing it as an OEM solution just caused a ton of frustration among people who rightly expected "Microsoft" products to talk to each other. Seriously, Wordpad has better .doc support than Works. Wordpad! That's inexcusable. When you factor in that the sole reason they used a different file format was probably to kill WordPerfect (same file extension - I doubt that was a coincidence), it just ups the malicious pointlessness factor up several notches.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[h4rr4r]

What you mean is it works in silverlight, not in those browsers. Had they used flash at least other OSes would be supported.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Anpheus]

The Office Web Apps, for what they do, work on Chrome/FireFox/Opera just fine at work. Sharepoint also works fine on all of those now, too.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh MSFT Student is $89-109, and Works was $29 at the local Walmart, so I don't see how a TRIPLING the cost could be seen as "slightly more expensive" for most folks. I agree that the Works format sucked the big wet titty, and I was glad when that died. But that still doesn't change the fact they have lost the OEM and sub $50 market, which any Walmart exec will tell you is a VERY profitable market. I still say they should take Word and Powerpoint and repackage them as "Windows Office Home" and push that to OEMs and sell it for $29.99 at Walmart.

As a guy that sells and service PCs to both home and SMBs I can tell you they are seriously bleeding users to Open Office in the home market, and they should probably be dropping to their knees right now and thanking RMS for the LibreOffice fork as that could seriously harm adoption. Home users won't get the Libreoffice name, and if they go to find Open Office and find it stagnant and unusable on Windows 8 because the fracture has left it unsupported that will be a big win for MSFT. It doesn't change the fact they've basically given the home users to Open Office ATM, by not having a low cost branding for the Walmart crowd. To me it just proves lack of leadership, and drives home my point that Gates Borg needs to be replaced by Beanie Ballmer, since Ballmer is a piss poor "me too!" leader, in the same vein as the Pepsi guy for Apple.

As a final note: dear Apple guys, remember how we all LMAO at how your company went to shit under the Pepsi guy? Well the shoe is on the other foot now and I'd like to just say...I'm sorry. At least you got that magnificent bastard Steve Jobs back to head the company YOU need to work, meanwhile We guys that need windows for work are stuck with a used car salesman for a CEO. Was it THIS painful to watch your company thrash around, completely lost and directionless? I can only hope that when Ballmer runs the company far enough into the ground Darth Gates will return and relegate Ballmer to running around the halls of Redmond with a jester's hat and little "Ballmer on a stick" for his personal amusement.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[AppleOSuX]

What is a true browser app really? If you go with the basic definition of the word "application", it simply means "the act of bringing something to bear; using it for a particular purpose". In that sense, anything in your browser window _is_ a true application of web browser technology.

Anyway, the hodge podge known as HTML/CSS/JS is not an SDK and it was never meant to be. It is shoe-horned into this role and I really can't fathom why people hang onto it so fervently.

I'll take Silverlight and Flash any day over that mess. At least Silverlight was actually developed keeping it's role as an SDK in mind.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Wyatt Earp]

Fark the Walmart and CostCo price points for office suites.

And no to an Office Home Power Point. If they have to make a lower end suite, Excel and Word.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[tokul]

Nothing more complicated than a "hello world" page is browswer-agnostic.

Even hello world is not agnostic. IMHO page margin defaults are different.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[hairyfeet]

Is that YOU talking, or are you talking about home users? Because I service home users every. single. day. and I don't think I've EVER seen one use Excel, or any spreadsheet for that matter. Little Billy on the other hand, making a presentation for class? I've been asked plenty of time about that. If someone needs accounting there is the new free Quickbooks home that'll hold their hand through that, whereas if you know enough to be using spreadsheets you probably ALREADY have a spreadsheet software you know.

And as for "Fark Walmart"? Look at the money they are making friend, and learn. The LAST thing MSFT wants is home users running Open Office because they don't want to spend $90 on Student, because those SAME users will grow and not need their product! Why do you think Bill said "If they steal a product, I want it to be ours" all those years ago? Because once people learn your software they tend to stick with it. Just giving up the low end is stupid, and hell! They don't do it with the OS, they have everything from Basic for low end netbooks to Ultimate for those that just have to have all the shiny, so why in the hell would you give up a good profitable market with your Office product?

It is just yet more proof that I'm right, we need to replace the old Gates Borg with Ballmer in a beanie sticking his tongue out while wearing an "I heart Apple!" T-shirt. He has NO direction, no real future planned, just a "me too!" strategy where he throws buzzword bingo to every idea from Zune (iPod ripoff) to TFA (Its in the cloud, LOL!). He is about as scary as your moron uncle, and the icon at /. should reflect that. Gates could be damned scary when he went after someone, just ask Netscape.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Sylak]

Actually, OWA 2010 recognizes FireFox (on any platform) and Safari as capable of running it on full settings. (not chrome yet though)

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[temcat]

If anybody there had a brain they'd take Word, Powerpoint, and Maybe OneNote, and package that as "MSFT Office Home" and push that in the low end market and to OEMs instead of more "Web 2.0" crap.

They had a cheapish package called "Works Suite" that at least contained full-featured Word.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no light-mode for non-IE browsers. All features work with CSS, Javascript, HTML. Some things, like bitmap scaling and/or rotation will work better if your browser supports better things than plain CSS (VML, SVG, or Silverlight.)

Works in FF, IE, Safari, Chrome across OSs. Should be at least as compatible as what's offered on hotmail/skydrive currently.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[greap]

The system is basically the same as Office Webapps (the enterprise self-hosted version of office online) which works the same between IE, FF & Chrome. It does use silverlight for one or two things (for good reason) but offers JS alternatives if the support isn't there. The experience is seamless to users, if the browser has silverlight it makes use of it otherwise it just ignores it. The only area where I have seen issues is with DRMed office documents, in order to protect copying/printing/saving it makes use of an IE specific plugin for credential & certificate exchange with the OS, hopefully the other vendors (or indeed MS themselves) will expand support beyond IE. The one thing it lacks is format diversity. As they have gone to all the trouble of writing a format agnostic rendering engine in the browser it would have been nice to see support for other formats (PDF for instance) and writeable access to old office documents (office docs prior to 2007 are only supported in read only mode currently). As it stands in an enterprise setting the product has to be combined with another such as Oracle AutoVue to provide sufficient format support for near global browser based visualisation. As an aside the political control the IE masters have over other MS product teams has been slipping substantially in the last few years. Previous versions of their products (SharePoint for instance) were specifically designed for IE and in many cases simply didn't work correctly in other browsers, that is no longer the case.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[ndtechnologies]

In Exchange 2010, OWA works well across Firefox, IE 8 and Chrome.

Re:"Best with IE" or not?

[oatworm]

Honestly, I thought Works cost more than that back in the day; for whatever reason, I misremembered it costing somewhere in the $75-90 range for retail. Then again, that was several years ago; I would imagine that its cost dropped significantly near the end of its life cycle. Do keep in mind, though, that Office Home & Student can be legitimately installed on up to three machines - since many people do, in fact, have more than one computer at home, that's pretty handy and drops it down to a more Works-level price point. I'll also note that, if given a choice between a $29 office suite that has Word and Powerpoint and a free office suite that also has something resembling Word and Powerpoint, most people will go with free if they know where to find it, so it probably doesn't make much sense for Microsoft to chase the bottom of the market.

That is low

[h4rr4r]

That is the low price?
So for a company of 500, a medium size business, you are looking at $36k/year and no real reduction in onsite costs other than adding office to the images and the cost of office.

Seems to expensive for small businesses and too low value for the big ones.

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm .... surely though this expense would go against opex? Seems reasonable to me.
What would the traditional Office setup cost a company of 500?

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

$6 / mo = $72 / year. Considering Office Professional costs close to $400, this is basically a subscription model. Yes, the $6/mo is cheaper than $400 / 5 years.

If $6 / mo is *expensive*, then I'm not sure how people manage payroll.

Re:That is low

[Zumbs]

... and for a single user it would be $72. Assuming 3 years between new versions of MS Office, the total payment would be $216. Not cheap at all.

Re:That is low

[TheKidWho]

$36k/year is expensive for a company of 500 people?

Re:That is low

[anUnhandledException]

When one consider that Office is $400 - $500 per license it is "half off".

Also I think it is more aimed at small business.

Fortune 500 can drop $500 a license per user no big deal.

A startup could preserve capital by paying $72 per year.

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

Also known as retail prices.
Amazon - $215

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm sure Microsoft would never have different pricing options for different markets. Doomed.

Re:That is low

[recoiledsnake]

You forgot to factor in the 25GB Exchange online mailboxes and Sharepoint Online for each user that doesn't come with Office Professional.

Re:That is low

[sakdoctor]

A startup could preserve captial by using openoffice, and starting a precident of not getting locked in right off the bat.
"The cloud" is not the horse to back.

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding MS Office 2010 Professional to a Dell PC was adding $349 to the cost of the system.

$6 * 12 months * 3 years = $216
$6 * 12 months * 5 years = $360

Unless there are new features in MS office that you need, how often will a small business replace their MS Office version? If a company is willing to use an online service, what are the chances that they'd move to Google Docs over this?

Re:That is low

[DragonWriter]

$6 / mo = $72 / year.

Or, to put it a different way, the cheapest version of Microsoft's hosted apps system is 44% more than the price of Google Apps Premier (and #DIV/0% more than the cost of Google Apps Standard.)

If $6 / mo is *expensive*

Expensive is always in terms of the alternatives.

then I'm not sure how people manage payroll.

By not spending more than is warranted on other things.
 

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to the alternate option of buying MS office that is actually a considerable cost saving and allows organisations to reduce initial capital investment and not have to manage/pay for upgrades. If you "must" buy office it is an incredibly good deal.

Re:That is low

[danomac]

Volume licensing is significantly less than that. Minimum 5 licenses.

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

A startup could learn to use Openoffice. Why do you think all the tech companies are all FOSS, google, yahoo, Facebook, twitter. It works better and is free. The only people who still buy Office are over 40.

Re:That is low

[Anonymous Coward]

A startup could preserve even MORE capital by not using MS office to begin with, especially when they're in the best position to do so. Many startups tend to be moneysinks nowadays though for larger failed executives to funnel through, so it makes sense to spend extravagantly for 100% unnecessary items. All the real, successful startups I've helped to establish have grown just fine with a linux backend and open office for their office suite needs.

Re:That is low

[greap]

Most organisations don't pay that. The most popular cal currently is the CoreCal which does the usual windows / office / SharePoint / exchange combo for about $110 without SA, the agreement is two years so is about $9 user/month. Based on the fact with the hosted office you still need a windows licence and the online version doesn't include all the features of the offline version it is still cheaper to keep it locally but not by much.

Its website

[neo00]

http://office365.microsoft.com/

Re:Its website

[Anonymous Coward]

https://docs.google.com/

Re:Its website

[The MAZZTer]

Does office365.com redirect there? Because office365.com is blocked at work (for not being indexed by whoever supplies our filters), but microsoft.com is not. If so, I thank you.

Re:Its website

[nschubach]

Just the link alone makes me wonder... Does MS have a secure site for office365?

Re:Its website

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice that this got marked "funny" cause Google Docs is a joke!

Zing!

Re:Its website

[Anonymous Coward]

Although any "cloud computing" solution I tend to despise. I was okay with Google docs. I was able to share a spreadsheet with friends in a few seconds (all without having to register an account) and allow them and I to work on it interactively.

It was one time where I didn't need to walk both of them through some "share your desktop" crap. I just copied the link given and ran with it. Sure, I drafted the spreadsheet up in openoffice then copied it to start...

For $6 a month

[Anonymous Coward]

I could download OpenOffice (or whatever it's called this month) many, many times. And I could still afford to burn it onto CD and give it to my friends.

Re:For $6 a month

[SudoGhost]

While that may or may not be true, I don't need to post as an Anonymous Coward to tell you that Office alone is overpriced for what it does, especially when there is a viable alternative for free, let alone this 'subscription' crap.

Re:For $6 a month

[Anonymous Coward]

You raise a good point. Is there any chance that there will be VBA support in this web-based version of Office?

Re:For $6 a month

[Mongoose Disciple]

Slashdot: where something negative about an Open Source project will always be modded troll, especially if it's true.

Seriously, pretending OO is just as good isn't going to do anything to help it be better.

Re:For $6 a month

[armanox]

Oddly enough I don't know anyone who uses VBA.

Re:For $6 a month

[anUnhandledException]

Yeah I don't get it.

Open Office is fine for some stuff but when it chokes on VBA most business aren't going to adopt it.

Our company (despite the objections of many) tried and it was a nightmare. Lots of excel docs for reports all had to be redone, sometimes finding a replacement functionality was difficult or time consuming. Later the company realized that many of our partners continued to use MS Office w/ xlsm files. Ooops. We had to start saying "please send it without VBA macros". Some did, most didn't. No way to read those except w/ Office. So the company bought a few licenses. After 18 months of pretending it would work they ended up purchasing new licenses for Office.

Still some people will go "LALALALALA Open Office is just as good". The zealots don't realize that sticker price isn't everything. If it was then there would only be one car in the US and it would be Hyundai Accent ($10,760 retail). The $500 the company "saved" by not purchasing Office likely wasted as much as $5,000 in productivity for some employees. I spent hours getting stuff to work in OO when it already worked fine in MS Office.

There is no free lunch. TCO and productivity is what matters and even with a $0 license OO still has cost.

Anyways now it is a 50/50 split between troll and flamebait.

Re:For $6 a month

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Can you point me to the viable alternative for Access?

Re:For $6 a month

[recoiledsnake]

But does the 'viable' alternative come with 25GB mailboxes backed by an SLA? Didn't think so.

Re:For $6 a month

[SudoGhost]

Yeah, it's called Open Office. Base does the same thing.

Re:For $6 a month

[SudoGhost]

Every 'cloud' server has a SLA. That's like asking if a program has a EULA. Most do. I don't know enough about the 25GB mailbox to comment on that.

Re:For $6 a month

[jimicus]

It's never going to be better.

Seriously.

If Oracle were to put together a team of absolute superstars - I mean real development gurus - and head them up with the best project manager they can find - and give them just one task - "Make OpenOffice import and export seamlessly to Microsoft Office formats, including all scripting and macros", it still wouldn't be better.

For one, Microsoft would suddenly start to find patents they could sue Oracle for infringing.

For another, the next version of Office would change things, drastically. There'd be an Office XML format "version 2", and it'd make version 1 look like a paragon of well-thought out design.

For a third, by the time such a feature made it into the stable version of OpenOffice, the two things I've just listed would have already happened. Twice.

Like it or not, we live in a world where people want to share information digitally, and that sharing has to work. Microsoft's rules say you do this by running an office suite on your PC that saves files to a known format and you collaborate by sharing those files in some form - be it through Sharepoint or, if you're more old-fashioned, by email attachment and storing on a fileserver. Thing is, if you play to those rules you're more or less guaranteed to lose. This is why Google Docs doesn't and it's why Microsoft are frightened of Google. Google are playing to their rules and Microsoft haven't had to compete on someone else's terms in a very long time.

Re:For $6 a month

[PCM2]

Yeah, it's called Open Office. Base does the same thing.

Kinda wishing there was a "-1, Completely False" mod right now. OpenOffice Base doesn't even come remotely close to replacing Access.

Re:For $6 a month

[Anonymous Coward]

Viable doesn't mean perfect. You pay for a service, you get it. You don't, and get get a similar service. Not the same exact service, but good enough for free. Don't want 'good enough'? That's fine, pay for it.

Re:For $6 a month

[nschubach]

Lucky you.

Re:For $6 a month

[Themer]

Really? We use it EXTENSIVELY between SQL Server and Access backends feeding Excel workbooks, gathering data from our production floor and feeding it back to other systems. Reporting, ad-hoc queries for troubleshooting. Just about everyone I know in the industry personally uses VBA for a ton of stuff.

Re:For $6 a month

[DragonWriter]

But does the 'viable' alternative come with 25GB mailboxes backed by an SLA? Didn't think so.

Google Apps Premier, one of the less expensive ($50/employee/yr. vs. $72/employee/year for Microsoft's offering) viable alternatives, does, in fact, come with 25GB mailboxes per user backed by a SLA with a three 9s uptime guarantee and 24/7 technical support.

Re:For $6 a month

[BlackSnake112]

For people starting with nothing any office product will work. If you already have files from application , it is often better to stay with that application then switch. If you can justify the cost of the switch, then do it. If you cannot, then do not.

I use open office at home, and install it for most people that ask for office. Does it work for them yes. Then again these are not people with hundreds or thousands of files from a different office application. Have I been burned by this? Yes. When docx, xlsx, and pptx arrived it caused some problems. Asking the person to have the sender resend in the 97-2003 file format was a bit harder. Tell them they need to do a save-as not just save. I set the default to 97-2003 for the office 2007 installs I did at work. That worked for most people. Why word has to use the new format for the math equations (with the Green symbols) is beyond me though. Main point is, use what works for you.

Re:For $6 a month

[icebraining]

For another, the next version of Office would change things, drastically. There'd be an Office XML format "version 2", and it'd make version 1 look like a paragon of well-thought out design.

My mother works as a translator as she still gets .doc files all the time. Microsoft can introduce all they want, but for better or worse they have to keep compatibility with their previous versions, or nobody would upgrade.

Re:For $6 a month

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, maybe my flippant comment should have been modded flamebait. I'm sorry. But did I say OpenOffice was a comprehensive or perfect replacement for everybody in all circumstances? No.

I was simply commenting that $6 a month can buy a lot of free stuff that might be perfectly adequate for the job for some people and some businesses. Always? No. The same might be true for Office365 -- maybe it will be perfectly adequate for some uses for some people. But any way you consider the question, $0 is some tough competition for Microsoft to go up against. Microsoft will have to show that what they are offering in Office365 is actually better than OpenOffice, or it might not get very far.

I know that OpenOffice has deficiencies compared to regular Microsoft Office, and I'm not trying to gloss over that, but for all we know, Office365 also has limitations compared to regular MS Office that will make it intolerable for some people to use. For example, does Office365 support VBA? I went looking for information (e.g., typing in "VBA" in the search box at http://office365.microsoft.com), but I couldn't find anything about it, so I don't know. I know it's a little early to look for that kind of detail to be spelled out, but it also emphasizes that any feature comparison is a little premature. By contrast, the expected price is disclosed and can be compared now.

Personally, I'm doubtful that web/network-based office suites can truly compete with local installations (or at least local network installations) in terms of performance and reliability. No matter how reliable Microsoft's servers might be, I'd be uncomfortable with the prospect that my entire operation could grind to a halt if the network goes down anywhere in between. The same applies to Google Apps. In both cases I think it would probably work okay for simpler and less-critical tasks, but if that's the case why not give the $0/month OpenOffice a try to see if it also does the job? If you really *need* "cloud" services accessible from anywhere, then a local office suite copy might not be in the competition at all.

I hope that properly clarifies the point I was trying to make, and I apologize again for being so flippant.

Re:For $6 a month

[Anonymous Coward]

You're ignorance is inexcusable here in /.
But even in your own words I can find the answer to your problem, so why can't you?

I can undurstand the nightmare that your company experienced, but I'm sure that it wasn't because OO wasn't good enough.
And, you said it yourself:
"Later the company realized that many of our partners continued to use MS Office w/ xlsm files"

So you realize the main headache really came from the effort MS made in to make Office documents not readable in any program other than their Office suit.

At least try to be honest. Even your mention to VBA is pathetic. VBA is a Microsft Visual Basic Implementation, that fallow the same policies of other MS software.

Please google: "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" for more info

Re:For $6 a month

[h4rr4r]

Go google "sunk cost".

Then you will realize why you are spouting nonsense.

Re:For $6 a month

[h4rr4r]

Those people should be euthanized.

Re:For $6 a month

[Themer]

Why? Because we use a system that works for us? People that advocate others being put to death tend to not have a solid base with which to make their argument.

Re:For $6 a month

[SplashMyBandit]

The funny thing is that the SLA is what the marketeers *promise*. If they don't actually provide it (more than likely given 'black swan' outages that affect everyone no matter how hard they work) then you really have to work hard to get compensation - meaning you won't get it since it costs more for legal to fight for than the money you'd recover. I outta know, we've just built a very high availability cloud product for a global company, and we know that accidents still happen.

In short, SLAs are indicative only and if you are choosing Office365 over *free* competitors based on the SLA alone then you probably need to stop believing so much marketing and re-evaluate the financials of each product.

Re:For $6 a month

[SudoGhost]

No open source program has the ability to completely integrate and replace the abilities of another program to the approval of 100% of the user base.

For what I used Access for, Base is fine. Not too good for converting existing Access files, mind you, but it works quite well for what I use it for, and I'd imagine that a bit of the population has the same situation.

You used it, and it didn't do the things it needed? Great, don't use it. That doesn't mean others can't use it to their satisfaction.

I'd say a good 90% of people who use Office use it for Word documents and basic Excel spreadsheets. For them, OpenOffice would be a viable alternative. Others use Office for very specialized features that cannot or are not yet replicated by a free alternative. OpenOffice would not be a viable alternative for them.

But I see no point in grandma buying Office just to print off cookie recipies.

Re:For $6 a month

[smurfsurf]

Do you have an alternative to OneNote? I failed to find anything having the organizing capabilities combined with a capability to mix text and drawings and place them freely on a page.

Re:For $6 a month

[armanox]

Hey - I'm all for people using what works for them. If it works for you, good for you.

Re:For $6 a month

[SudoGhost]

Personally no, but this thread may be of assistance to you:

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5745

Sorry I can't help more, but OpenNote isn't something I've used, let alone alternatives.

Re:For $6 a month

[jimicus]

I didn't say they'd drop compatibility with the old format. Simply that in my theoretical scenario, the default save format for Office would become ".docx2" (or whatever you want to call it).

It's doing this sort of thing has kept people upgrading - nobody minds asking for a document to be re-sent in the older format once or twice, but it starts to get silly after a few times. Shortly after that, people upgrade.

Re:Office 365 fits between Office 97 & Office

[MrEricSir]

No, it just means that it doesn't work on leap years.

Perfect timing!

[jkmartin]

I'm buying this to run on my Windows phone!

Awesome...

[Stregano]

I was hoping for a pay version of Google Docs. Kidding aside. I am truly hoping they have some good offerings since it looks like they will allow for online video editting. That would be very awesome

Re:Awesome...

[DragonWriter]

I was hoping for a pay version of Google Docs.

Google Apps Premier already exists. This is just Microsoft offering a more expensive alternative.

Strange Name

[Nerdfest]

I assume the next version will be Office 366. How long have I been asleep?

Re:Strange Name

[barzok]

There won't be version numbers. They'll just roll out updates, fixes & new features over time. Just like Google Docs and GMail - I don't recall seeing version numbers there, updates just roll out every now and then.

Re:Strange Name

[Tablizer]

I assume the next version will be Office 366.
How long have I been asleep?

I hope I am asleep when Office 666 comes out.

Re:Strange Name

[AJWM]

It just means that it won't work during leap years -- and the next one is less than 15 months away.

Re:Strange Name

[decipher_saint]

Office 366 is reserved for Leap Years...

Re:Strange Name

[Anonymous Coward]

No it will be simply Office*
*Space

Re:Strange Name

[CobaltBlueDW]

What an abysmally dreary name. Why you you ever want to associate your product with a name that conjures up mental images of being in an office on weekends?!

'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[lbalbalba]

Guess that covers Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access. So what's the rest, then ? Visio ? Exchange ?

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[vlm]

Guess that covers Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access. So what's the rest, then ? Visio ? Exchange ?

Good point. Google Docs has a word processor thats better because its free. Its a competitive market. But what about Visio?

Who out there has a web based Visio that I can use? Like for network and wiring diagrams?

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[gstoddart]

Good point. Google Docs has a word processor thats better because its free.

Man, I'll give you some human excrement for free ... that doesn't make it better.

Free crap is still free crap. Not saying that the Google app is, in fact, crap. Merely that "free" and "better" are on separate axes.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Oryx - it's free and open source. You may define your own diagram types with some svg an javascript and export diagrams as pdf, maong others.

You can try it right now: http://oryx-project.org/backend/poem/repository

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess that covers Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access. So what's the rest, then ? Visio ? Exchange ?

Good point. Google Docs has a word processor thats better because its free. Its a competitive market. But what about Visio?

Who out there has a web based Visio that I can use? Like for network and wiring diagrams?

If you wanted to use a free version of Microsoft Word, you would use the Word Web App, available free at http://docs.com/ or http://office.live.com/.

This Microsoft service is analogous to "hosted Google Docs", which also costs money.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who out there has a web based Visio that I can use? Like for network and wiring diagrams?

LucidChart:
http://www.lucidchart.com/

Also, Gliffy (http://www.gliffy.com/), Lovely Charts (http://www.lovelycharts.com/), and more: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/wireframing-mockup-prototyping-tools-plan-designs/

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparable and free is better than comparable and $6/man-month.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[cbhacking]

Exchange has had Outlook Web Access for years - it literally invented the AJAX webmail interface, in fact. My university started offering webmail through outlook.com (which really does look and work a lot like desktop Outlook) a couple years ago, and it's far better than any other webmail interface that I've tried.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Apps for Business charges money for Google Docs. Office365 is competing with that, not free Google Apps.

Individuals can already use the Office Web Apps for free on Skydrive. Here's an example of an Excel file:

http://cid-20f065afc1acdb2e.office.live.com/view.aspx/Blog%20posts/Winter%20Olympics%20Medals.xlsx

(Editing is locked out because it's shared read-only, but if you copy it to your own Skydrive account, you can do editing or create your own)

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[cygnwolf]

The question, though, is "can you really call it comparable?" and that's the problem. Sure, it's a word processor. But will it DO everything that Office does?

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Docs.com, Facebook, Hotmail, and Skydrive let you use Office Web Apps for free.

http://docs.com/1ZQY

This is the business class version of that, with additional services added on top (like Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync).

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question, though, is "can you really call it comparable?" and that's the problem. Sure, it's a word processor. But will it DO everything that Office does?

Does it have to do EVERYTHING that Office does in order to be "comparable"?

It depends on your use case. A jet fighter and a bomber are comparable military vehicles. A helicopter and a jet fighter are comparable too. A Humvee and a jet fighter a comparable.

What are you using it for? What do you want it to do for you? How much are you willing to spend? How fast do you want it done? How much customization do you need?

In several use cases, OO.org AND google docs are both comparable to MSO.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[aztracker1]

For an office with >10 people, Google Docs is not free... Also the MS offer includes Exchange and docs with a 25GB per account storage.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, you say that while implying like you're a computer savvy person, but at the same type the average joe just wants letters to appear on his screen in a predictable manner to create his "document" that he'll never remember the file extension to. Average joe will use the cheapest method that works to create a "document". Businesses will continue to get shafted until they stop purposely training their employees in computer illiteracy.

If YOU, as a computer savvy person, cannot figure out how to adapt between different environments and UNDERSTAND the very basis of what the FUCK you're doing in the first place, then I hope you're happy with mediocrity. The rest of humanity that will make contributions that matter to us all will progress without you.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[mpe]

Free crap is still free crap. Not saying that the Google app is, in fact, crap. Merely that "free" and "better" are on separate axes.

What you probably mean is that "cost" and "untility/quality" are separate axes. After all there is plenty of expensive "crap" around.

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[mpe]

Does it have to do EVERYTHING that Office does in order to be "comparable"?

Especially considering how many MS Office "features" often go unused.

It depends on your use case. A jet fighter and a bomber are comparable military vehicles. A helicopter and a jet fighter are comparable too. A Humvee and a jet fighter a comparable. What are you using it for? What do you want it to do for you?

Ah old fashioned systems analysis. As opposed to the more modern approach of spending lots of money on software prior to working out what tasks it needs to perform :)

How much are you willing to spend? How fast do you want it done? How much customization do you need?

Until the first two questions have been answered these last three cannot have any meaningful answers. Leaving aside the ability of costs rising to meet /exceed budgets (especially if external contractors/consultants are involved).

Re:'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ?

[gstoddart]

What you probably mean is that "cost" and "untility/quality" are separate axes. After all there is plenty of expensive "crap" around.

So, other than telling me that you think I should have used words approved by you, have you actually said anything different than I did?

Nothing I said precludes "expensive crap" or "cheap and awesome". The poster said "better because its free" -- free doesn't make for better unless your only measure is cost. Ergo, "free" and "better" are on separate axes. Feel free to imagine your own magic quadrant system.

You're on your own for "untility", though.

Office 364 ... if it crashes in a day.

[dslmodem]

Well, it is really a bad name per my understanding.

To keep up with the trend, they should try "iOffice", "FaceOffice",

Re:Office 364 ... if it crashes in a day.

[vlm]

Powerpoint-Roulette, how many slides till an adult image?

Re:Office 364 ... if it crashes in a day.

[Tablizer]

To keep up with the trend, they should try "iOffice", "FaceOffice",

Well, instead of Solitaire as a built-in Windows game, they now have PokerFace.
   

Re:Office 364 ... if it crashes in a day.

[sco08y]

Well, it is really a bad name per my understanding.

To keep up with the trend, they should try "iOffice", "FaceOffice",

It's Office365 because it won't work on Feb 29.

Go ahead, attack MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.... Slashdot has become the moaning geek. Everybody yells and complains about MS and other non-open companies. There are people who works hardly in software like office... why to attack them? Don't like the price, don't buy it. Stop moaning please

Re:Go ahead, attack MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.... Slashdot has become the moaning geek. Everybody yells and complains about MS and other non-open companies. There are people who works hardly in software like office... why to attack them? Don't like the price, don't buy it. Stop moaning please

In case you're not really an idiot, I'll spell it out for you:

We're the ones who get stuck supporting users of these apps.

We're the ones who get stuck building/maintaining apps/infrastructure written against them.

We're generally NOT the ones who get to decide what the team's/division's/firm's platform and standard apps will be.

NOW do you get it?

Re:Go ahead, attack MS

[Mongoose Disciple]

In case you're not really an idiot, I'll spell it out for you:

We're the ones who get stuck supporting users of these apps.

We're the ones who get stuck building/maintaining apps/infrastructure written against them.

We're generally NOT the ones who get to decide what the team's/division's/firm's platform and standard apps will be.

NOW do you get it?

Yes. You're bitter at your station in life and would like to blame someone else for it.

Work hard and move into management or a more valued technical position where you get a real voice in those decisions, or quit your bitching.

It's not a software company's fault that your employer doesn't care what you think.

Re:Go ahead, attack MS

[AnonymousClown]

Work hard and move into management ....

???

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.....

No, really ....do you actually believe that?

Do you also believe that all you have to do is start a business, work hard, and you too can be rich?

Or how about, "the check's in the mail"?

Or "I won't come in your mouth"?

Or "No new taxes!"?

Re:Go ahead, attack MS

[Mongoose Disciple]

No, really ....do you actually believe that?

Do you also believe that all you have to do is start a business, work hard, and you too can be rich?

I believe it's more likely to produce success than anonymous whining on the internet.

Smart people who work hard eventually have a voice in the decisions that affect their jobs. Not always, and not immediately, but that's generally what happens.

If it doesn't for you, you might not be as smart or as valuable as you like to think you are. In that case your options are to find a different job where you're valued more appropriately, or come to terms with being the ultimately replaceable cog in a grander machine that you actually are.

Re:Go ahead, attack MS

[gmhowell]

If it doesn't for you, you might not be as smart or as valuable as you like to think you are. In that case your options are to find a different job where you're valued more appropriately, or come to terms with being the ultimately replaceable cog in a grander machine that you actually are.

You have just uttered the thoughts that make most readers of slashdot wake in a cold sweat, desperately clutching their stuffed Tux and whimpering for their mothers. Against all their beliefs to the contrary, they are not special and other people are smarter than they are.

Surprised it's taken this long:

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'm surprised it's taken this long to get this kind of offering and price point out -- it's seemed clear for a while that Microsoft would like to grow a presence in the "software as a service" space.

Re:Surprised it's taken this long:

[Fnkmaster]

LOL. A little tidbit of history that may not be widely known or at least not widely remembered - Microsoft has actually developed web-based versions of its Office product on at least 2 previous occasions, perhaps more. These products never saw the light of day, and for various reasons, strategic and political chief among them, the projects were axed, developers reassigned, and code tossed away then restarted some time later when somebody decided that NOW the time was ripe for a web-based office.

Amusingly enough, I believe one of these efforts was part of what was originally termed the ".NET initiative" and was called "Office.NET" at least as a working title - back when .NET meant anything and everything, before they decided that .NET actually was the class library and VM for their C# language. See, for example, this article from back in 2002.

Remember what a confused mess the .NET initiative was? It's truly amazing how much Microsoft has had its head up its ass over the last decade. Windows 7 is the first decent product they've put out in *years*.

A friend of mine from college, a very bright guy, was one of the project managers on the Office.NET project before it got axed. Anyway, he was so frustrated by his experience with this project that I believe it was in part his reason for leaving Microsoft.

So... it seems like they finally followed through on this, but it's not like the idea just occurred to them recently. No, it's more likely they only decided to bring it to market now because of the cloud computing hype and the fact that the traction of OpenOffice.Org and other Office alternatives has them scared shitless (of course, OpenOffice has just fragmented itself and will probably manage to squander the traction they've finally obtained after all these years of effort).

Re:Surprised it's taken this long:

[SplashMyBandit]

Maybe "Office success in the cloud" will be co-temporal with "Year of the Linux desktop" :)

Thanks for your informative post (you're already at the exalted height of +5 so we can't mod more).

Nothing to see here, move along...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is just trolling to market a competitive product against google docs.

Tell you what

[Weaselmancer]

I'll install OpenOffice 500 times and you can pay me the $36k. Deal?

Re:Tell you what

[Shados]

Sure, if you include 25 gb managed mailboxes for the 500 people with a 99.9% uptime SLA and 24/7 support, backups, failover, etc. That is going to be entertaining.

Re:Tell you what

[marcello_dl]

Windows apologists kept repeating the linux is too different mantra for years now they gotta defend the ribbon. Yay! karma exists.

Re:Tell you what

[h4rr4r]

That SLA is worthless, read it. At most you get back a percentage of what you paid.

But with that included it is not that bad.

Re:Tell you what

[Mongoose Disciple]

Certainly I never said that "Linux is too different", so lumping me in with people who did is a strawman at best.

Re:Tell you what

[Maxo-Texas]

Man... I'd love to even have a 1gb mail box.

I'm under outlook and limited to 100mb (as is everyone at the company).

I have 5gb each in my personal accounts.

My outlook work accounts clogs with a few screen shots these days.

Re:Tell you what

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing available with Linux rivals the functionality of Exchange.

Re:Tell you what

[Weaselmancer]

Drat! You're right! It would be far too difficult to get 500 people Gmail accounts.

You got me.

Re:Tell you what

[Shados]

Now, think about that really hard for a sec. A -lot- of companies go with Google Apps Premier for their gmail accounts (at 50$/year/user). There's a reason for it.

Re:Tell you what

[marcello_dl]

sure, and "Cue a dozen people who claim OO is better because they're too luddite for the ribbon interface" isn't a strawman right ?

Because there is no way anybody can claim that OO is better for other reasons, e.g. because it's free from control of a monopolist corporation, runs under linux on inter ppc alpha and other archs, can work with the latest version on a 700mhz pIII with 256 megs if you really need it, has a document format which is standardized in less than 3000 pages and without stuffing the ISO board with your minions... LOL

Re:Tell you what

[Mongoose Disciple]

"Cue a dozen people who claim OO is better because they're too luddite for the ribbon interface" isn't a strawman right ?

Nope, because someone, if not you, will usually post that.

The rest of your reasons just aren't very good ones.

Re:Tell you what

[metrix007]

I wish I had saved my modpoints. Sigh

The fact is OO is shit. Linux is too fucking different. The Ribbon is intuitive, and identical on every single install of office that uses it. Every Linux distro does things slightly differently, without getting into if they use KDE or Gnome or whatever.

Re:Tell you what

[tehcyder]

can work with the latest version on a 700mhz pIII with 256 megs if you really need it

Really? How come it's not included on distros like Xubuntu then? They go for the lightweight Gnumeric and Abiword instead, and need a P3/256mn RAM to run, why wouldn't they just use the more fully featured OO?

Re:Tell you what

[hairyfeet]

Wasting mod points without having the BALLS to actually debate me, or is it you simply don't have a way to refute A SINGLE POINT I've made? How about instead of trying to hide me for pointing out the emperor has no clothes, you try to actually debate? Well here it is again, enjoy!

Actually I would say with the KDE interface Linux is every bit as nice as the Windows desktop, to some maybe even better. That ain't the problem, it is when stuff goes wrong that is the problem. Let me give an example that is a pretty everyday thing: No driver. In Windows 7 you can just right click in device manager and pick "update driver", that is of course if you get that far, because most of the time Action Center will pop up and say "Hey, did you know you don't have a driver for foo? Want me to find one for you?" and if it is under 4 years old odds are it will. Under 3 years old and it is pretty much 100%.

Now compare to Linux: No driver? Spend lots of time in Google, if you are lucky you find the right forum (this is written from a new user perspective, which is what you'd have if it actually started gaining share) and ask for help. Most likely get called a noob or talked down to like a child if you don't know the EXACT hardware model, make, and rev, which frankly I can't name that off on half the hardware in mine and I built the damned thing, I doubt a home user would have a clue. Get given a bunch of CLI commands, which the user will probably fuck up, to find out the above, and then be given yet ANOTHER set of CLI commands, that frankly I've found rarely work unless you "tweak" them for the specific hardware, which again, the odds a home user could do this? About zero. Then add in the "update foo broke my hardware" fun of not having a stable hardware ABI and the kernel constantly be tweaked by Linus (who says Linux is not designed, but evolves like a virus) and like most of the kernel guys doesn't care about desktop user)and I'm afraid you have a trainwreck.

The best thing for Linux desktop adoption would be to fork the kernel AWAY from Linus and the other kernel server devs, add a stable hardware ABI and desktop enhancements, and make desktop and server two separate products.

As for TFA, might work for SMBs, won't work for home user. They really should have come up with a replacement for Works for low end and OEM. Now that slot will be taken by Open Office if this whole LibreOffice/Open Office forking mess don't kill things, which just shows lack of any forward thinking in the company.

Re:Tell you what

[marcello_dl]

Ya rly, try it, it's slow but the latest version works. Xubuntu and lightweight distros ship with abiword and gnumeric because they are lighter faster and so more appropriate, IIRC openoffice is just an apt-get away.

Re:Tell you what

[marcello_dl]

until that someone is a significant share, it's a strawman. You might want to prove your point finding luddites proclaiming OO superiority due to ribbon absence. And no, the ribbon sux can be said even by people who want to use office like they did on their previous PC like my less linux-literate coworkers.

Re:Tell you what

[Mongoose Disciple]

You might want to prove your point finding luddites proclaiming OO superiority due to ribbon absence.

Here's one minute of using the Slashdot search feature. If you would like to find additional examples, it's very easy to do so.

Re:Tell you what

[Mongoose Disciple]

Apparently I'm a link idiot today:

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1641038&cid=32099156

Re:Tell you what

[niftymitch]

99.9 uptime... but does your ISP give you that. Uptime is a function of ALL the links and all the other cruft. And is this 99.9 in your business hours -- are you giving 2/3 of the day to them for free because you would never know that had a hiccup.

How reliable is your VPN.... ?

Better get OpenOffice images downloaded before Oracle tinkers and breaks it.

Re:Tell you what

[vandamme]

I run AbiWord when I don't want to wait for OO to load, and just want to type something simple. Sorta like Works and Word, but without the evil monopoly.

Re:Tell you what

[vandamme]

Me: "Can I print on my old printer?" Win7: "Screw you. Buy a new printer and download a 300MB driver." Tux: "Sure. Drivers built in, you wanna test page?"

Office386 !

[Tablizer]

I misread the title as "Office386", and was thinking, "Boy, Microsoft really is falling behind the curve".

We're doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

With even a few thousand people running this, I predict it will suck up more bandwidth than P2P ever did, and it will blue screen the 'net at least a few times per day.

Re:We're doomed

[vegiVamp]

Don't worry. With net neutrality soon to be gone, either it goes in the evil-bandwidth-hog queue, or MS has to pay off so many ISPs that it's simply too expensive to keep running.

Bill Gates quote

[Tablizer]

Gates: "365 days a year otta be enough for anybody."

Re:Office 365 fits between Office 97 & Office

[jasonmicron]

No, it just means that it doesn't work on leap years.

Sort of like the PS3?

Any VBA support in Office 365?

[Houdini42]

Otherwise, I don't think this thing is worth the money.

What if I lose internet access?

[eepok]

There are a few types of programs I would expect to lose functionality when I lose internet access. MMO games, an internet browser, email.

There are some I would expect to always be functional regardless of internet connection. Media players, single-player games, and office suites are some examples.

Re:What if I lose internet access?

[drodal]

With the built in HTML 5 databases and HTML 5 app cache you will be able to do that offline too

Really

http://gizmodo.com/5156357/browser+based-offline-gmail-demonstrated-on-iphone-android

really it's happening already.

This is a video of gmail running offline with full features....

So I wonder if MS is going to do this eventually.....

Re:What if I lose internet access?

[geekmux]

There are a few types of programs I would expect to lose functionality when I lose internet access. MMO games, an internet browser, email.

There are some I would expect to always be functional regardless of internet connection. Media players, single-player games, and office suites are some examples.

You must be part of my generation of older computer users who still remember what it's like to not have always-on, high-speed broadband access streaming everywhere.

I guess my point here is there's no point in worrying about the "what-ifs" when you lose internet access, because for todays generation of internet addicts who are tethered online with no less than three devices within 17.5 meters of their body at all times, the answer to your question is very simple; nothing will get done. At all. It'll be mass hysteria in the office when users realize they're disconnected from Facebook and Twitter for more than 34 seconds.

Re:What if I lose internet access?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. You go back to using OpenOffice (or whatever it's called by then).

Re:What if I lose internet access?

[eepok]

Indeed, I'm part of that still-mostly-young generation that grew up with the option of dial-up and broadband was not ubiquitous. Pagers were mainstream and cell phones were just breaking into the mass market.

More importantly, I come from a low-income background where there were some months where we had to decide to pay the electricity bill in whole and risk losing water or try to negotiate with the electric company some way to pay later. Plenty of people still live the same way and would likely easily be suckered into this "$6/month deal!" without considering the large cost of a broadband internet connection before signing up. You forget such things when you just want the best for your student child and are told that this is a super-cheap way to help guarantee a strong education.

IE? nah, just Silverlight

[vlueboy]

Hotmail is controlled by MS. IIRC, about a year ago they started displaying PPS (and maybe DOC) attachments in-browser. They did so while promoting the "works best with Silverlight... install" here.

So they have gathered enough statistics on Silverlight and any failures in display that always come from end-user feedback. Now, they are ready to entice corporations. The corps will have to approve Silverlight for their outdated browsers, or be faced with the same "degraded" fallback interfaces that result in reduced productivity that you already noted with Outlook's non-native execution.

Re:IE? nah, just Silverlight

[ais523]

I had the opposite experience with Outlook Web Access; eventually, I ended up using it exclusively with Firefox to get the degraded version, as the full version on IE was so buggy and annoying. The degraded version might have needed a few more clicks, but at least it worked and was internally consistent.

Go ahead, attack the people who attack MS

[SudoGhost]

Yeah.... Anonymous Coward has become the moaning geek. Everybody yells and complains about people who complain about MS and other non-open companies. There are people who think little about sentence structure... why to attack them? Did they set you up the bomb? Don't like the post, don't comment on it. Stop moaning please.

someones scared....

[hesaigo999ca]

Wow, does this ever show that M$ missed the boat when OpenOffice came out with web based document management system, and they are now stumbling to try and bring out a quick recap of what that one does already! No more licenses needed for office when they see everyone moved to openoffice, so now they figure to get back all the lost users by offering office2007 but web based???

Re:someones scared....

[im_thatoneguy]

OpenOffice has a web based document management system? Since when? Is it like sharepoint?

In all seriousness (well seriously I didn't know OO had a web system of any kind), this has more to do with Microsoft's next big frontier: running your company's IT for you.

They don't want to sell you software, they want to sell you their software and hosting for that software. No longer will you own and manage an exchange server, file server, domain server etc... Microsoft will just give you a MS Bridge 2012 which you hook up to a Fiber internet connection. Documents will all be stored on MS servers. Instead of logging into your company's domain server you'll log into a MS hosted domain.

Thick clients, remote hosting. That's the future MS is pitching.

Re:someones scared....

[hesaigo999ca]

I think this is still ok, as I mentioned M$ are never front runners when it comes to really creating stuff, they just copy , even add-ons for their own software, usually you will end up seeing it in the next gen., such as visual studio and the like. I remember way back when you had very few members to gmail coming out, and I happened to know a guy whom worked with google on their servers, and I mentioned to him that gmail could also be a offer a little more room if they had a filesystem scan incorporated into their systems that looked for an exact duplicate of a file (which when you send out those stupid joke emails, everyone gets) and use pointers instead of a whole new copy of the same file...so low and behold, this was used later not only in the gmail system, but also the hotmail system. I can see why M$ would want to do this, as now with cloud computing offering online content even when offline, and also using free space amongst all pcs to help with file raid parity, it was only a matter of time before we would see them moving this technology fully to the web. Makes so much sense, why should your business worry about backups and domains and what not, when your whole enterprise can be on their servers, and at their finger tips....

Big Brother watch out, you got Big Daddy moving in!

Mod up

[recoiledsnake]

Not sure why this is marked troll.

Exchange Online is part of the deal, providing all those services.

Server Error in '/' Application.

[vlueboy]

Ouch. That link is slashdotted or something, so all we got is that error.
Which was great, decent reminder that MS hosting all your office documents on the cloud reduces your company's effective ownership of the files. One day IT blocks the domain inadvertently, or it gets DDoS'd by anonymous, or the local spyware kills it in your hostfile, or all the phones and internet go down at the company because of a cut cable... so then what do the managers do to access their files?

Cloud indeed.

Pre-planned downtime

[tawian]

We can safely expect 8 hours of downtime every year.

Works best ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... with Chrome.

Doesn't this legitimize Google Docs big time?

[drodal]

They made fun of Google docs. And now they are doing it.... but not for free....

Does anyone really want to pay for this stuff anymore..... I don't......

Re:Doesn't this legitimize Google Docs big time?

[Shados]

They have a version for free, like Google Docs. And like google docs, they have a pay for version. There's just a bigger distinction between the two (Microsoft's marketing department is the worse in the industry).

Re:Doesn't this legitimize Google Docs big time?

[swanzilla]

You don't, but businesses will.

From TFA:

Google offers its hosted Google Docs and Gmail for free to consumers, and many small businesses use the free services. Google also sells a business version, known as Google Apps, for $50 per user per year.

Re:Doesn't this legitimize Google Docs big time?

[DragonWriter]

They made fun of Google docs. And now they are doing it.... but not for free....

The version of Google Apps (Google Apps Premier) that is tied to your companies domain, allows more than 50 users from your organization, and comes with an uptime guarantee and 24/7 technical support, etc., etc., etc. is also not for free.

Its also less expensive for Microsoft's offering.

Does anyone really want to pay for this stuff anymore..... I don't......

Businesses -- though some small businesses get buy with the free organization version of Google Apps (Google Apps Standard) -- actually very often prefer to pay for something and get service guarantees to which the vendor can be held accountable, technical support, etc. Even aside from the other features the for-pay cloud offerings have over their free counterparts.

Privacy concerns?

[John Saffran]

Given that sensitive internal documents would also be authored via office suite products, who in their right mind would give MS their crown jewels? Ultimately any webservice entails the forwarding of the data to the provider for processing, which means that MS might have access to all sorts of sensitive data.

The alternative is to have dual-installs or local installs for people handling sensitive documents but why not just have local installs across the user base anyway then? There might be some benefits in terms of reduction of maintenance of local installs but you're really gambling if you expect people to use different tools for different types of documents

Re:Privacy concerns?

[raind]

"which means that MS might have access to all sorts of sensitive data."

MS? try the world.

Imagine the board decision meeting

[SpaghettiPattern]

Imagine the board decision meeting.

Seattle moderator: Right, we wanna shov... sell our Office sofware [sic.] to the wider public and we need a name. You John?
John: Well, how's about we name it Office %VERSION%++
SM: Very good indeed, John... You Mark?
Mark: It's for the people ... which are alive ... eh lets name it "Live ........
(Several hours pass)
SM: (Yelling) Oh for god's sake, we can't name everything 360, can we!
Some nobody: (Very meek voice) 365 maybe? For the year, you know? OK, I'll get my coat.
(Several more hours pass)
SM: (Desperate) OK, 365 it is.
Another nobody: (Very softly) And what about leap years?.

Re:Imagine the board decision meeting

[initialE]

The branding Office 365 will not last until the year 2012, that's my prediction. Why? It's not nothing to do with the durability of the product, it's just that marketing folk have a way of coming and going quite frequently. And the next guy always wants to change something. But anyway I would have branded it Office 24/7 instead.

Re:Imagine the board decision meeting

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the board AFTER they find out their precious new name is already taken:
http://www.office365.co.uk/
"Office 365 is a premier supplier of Office Stationery and Supplies in the UK. Free delivery and next day delivery available."

Re:Imagine the board decision meeting

[SpaghettiPattern]

Office 24/7

Remember th' seventh of days upon even He rests, you heretic!

So how long...

[pkinetics]

... will it take to run the spell checker and grammer nazi on my document?

The Numbers

[stimpleton]

From TFA :"$27 per user per month"

I work for an New Zealand small - medium company. The stacks up thus:

Option 1. 20 seat Office 2010 enterprise license - $13,000 per annum
Option 2. Office 365. 20 x $27/month x $NZ Exchange = $8484 per annum.
Option 3. 20 OEMS with hardware purchase(assume 4 year cycle): $2500 per annum

PS: US readers will think I have these numbers grossly wrong. I havent. The cost of doing business in NZ is expensive. Option 1 could drop in price. I have already had an email stating this could change as they are keen to always "find a best fit for an organisation".

Re:The Numbers

[bloodhawk]

Your comparisons are hardly accurate or fair. You chose the most expensive option for subscription which included sharepoint and Exchange while completely excluding them from option 1 or 3. Realistically option 2 would be significantly cheaper if you excluded exchange and sharepoint or 1 and 3 would be many thousands of dollars higher and include additional hardware costs.

Re:The Numbers

[SplashMyBandit]

If you are in New Zealand I suggest checking out a Google license (Fronde is the local agent I think). It would seem they're quite a bit cheaper than the MS offerings and new features come out quite frequently.

Disclaimer: I'm a contractor who's passed through Fronde recently (not an employee), and have my ear to the ground and just wanted to share that you might be able to get a better deal with Google than Office365 in NZ (real disclaimer: personally I prefer OpenOffice and Ubuntu, but I realise not everyone wants this).

Re:The Numbers

[SheeEttin]

Option 4. OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice: $0 per annum.
(Of course, that's just the monetary cost. You'll probably need to expend some time doing a little user re-education...)

Re:The Numbers

[Trelane]

It's probably easier than switching to OOo than the ribbon.

Re:The Numbers

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, or you could use Abiword, OOo or god forbid, Google Wordly for $0.00. Tough decision...

Re:The Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

We just finished migrating 7000 users to office 2010 (we were on 2003). After 4 weeks we have had less than 10% of the average calls we normally get for a migration, so much so that our IT director asked the help desk to recheck their stats. The ribbon is almost universally accepted as a simple yet efficient improvement. Sure their wil always be some stuck in the past that don't like change but to say OO would be an easier switch is simply bullshit.

Re:The Numbers

[mpe]

I work for an New Zealand small - medium company. The stacks up thus:

Option 1. 20 seat Office 2010 enterprise license - $13,000 per annum
Option 2. Office 365. 20 x $27/month x $NZ Exchange = $8484 per annum.
Option 3. 20 OEMS with hardware purchase(assume 4 year cycle): $2500 per annum

The currency code you need is "NZD". Without knowing the actual tasks which are needed it's impossible to know what version of MS Office might be needed or even if it is the most suitable package for the task in hand. At the most extreme you might spending lots of money for the most expensive MS Office package when OO.org will do everything you ever need to do.

Re:The Numbers

[Trelane]

I've seen similar statistics about migrations to OOo from MSO from people willing to put their names behind it. Perhaps MSO is just crap?

Leap Year Fail

[Infonaut]

They're going to be so screwed when the service goes down for an entire day every four years. Ah, but then they'll introduce Office365+.

1.2 GB active x control

[codepunk]

All you need to do is install this 1.2 GB active x control. Or you can opt for the 1.6 GB active x professional version that includes "web bob" and "clippy".

Turning company direction

[gmuslera]

well, not so much, at the end is just 5 degrees, but the number looks impressive.

Beatings will continue until morale improves

[Infonaut]

In other words: If you don't like something, please shut your mouth and don't say anything, particularly in, you know, a website explicitly designed for discussion. Have I got it right?

Re:Office 365 fits between Office 97 & Office

[elashish14]

Well they would have done it, but they're still trying to fix this.

And I'm sure Gates would say '3 significant figures is enough for anyone,' but I accept no fewer than 5 in which case a year is, more accurately, 364.24 days.

Re:Server Error in '/' Application. Legal Q

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch. That link is slashdotted or something, so all we got is that error.
Which was great, decent reminder that MS hosting all your office documents on the cloud reduces your company's effective ownership of the files.

Cloud indeed.

Isn't the justice department trying to argue that sending data to the cloud effectively means that they can snoop without a warrant? Something similar to how they interpret an email to be like a postcard not a letter.

Exchange on Linux

[plasticsquirrel]

On the plus side, this means that some businesses may not be so trapped with Windows due to their reliance on Exchange. This has always been a big sticking point for the use of Linux and other open source platforms in businesses. To have any option of using Exchange on a Linux desktop opens up some interesting possibilities.

why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps this move to a subscription model will finally cause businesses to jump off the upgrade bandwagon and realize their current office suite (heck their office suite from over a decade ago) fulfills all the companies needs that the subscription version does (if you need backups, then set it so saves happen on a folder backed up onto the network or on a network folder itself).

This product will certainly last longer

[Anonymous Coward]

than that "Kin 42" product they had earlier this year.

Oh, great...

[uvajed_ekil]

Just what I want, to be in the office 365 days a year. A successful office should not need to be open EVERY day, unless it directly serves a hospital emergency or operating room, a police or fire station, the USGS, or is the Oval Office. What horrible connotations the name of this product evokes.

Re:Oh, great...

[Anonymous Coward]

But you get February 29th off every four years. That should be enough vacation for anyone.

Firefox, Safari & Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Browser Requirements — Outlook Web App
Internet Explorer 7 or above
Firefox 3 or higher
Safari 3 or higher on Macintosh OS X 10.5
Chrome 3 and later versions

http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/faqs.aspx

um

[Charliemopps]

So why are we all still using office? I don't get it. Open office can do just about everything worthwhile that office can do with the exception of Access (open offices DB sucks) but really, for most business's MS Office is a complete waste of money.

Re:Office 365 fits between Office 97 & Office

[thexile]

No, Zune.

Six bucks a month.... and in a year.

[niftymitch]

Six bucks a month.... and in a year you will have spent $72. When home and student edition costs like $124 for three users.

The gift that takes and takes...

I cannot tell you how many times my girlfriend cusses, sputters and tosses things because the WiFi link took a ClomcastTurn2Xinity.... and dropped the link and had to start over.