Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Office 2013: Microsoft Cloud Era Begins In Earnest

Posted by timothy on from the click-here-to-subscribe dept.

snydeq writes "Microsoft's release of Office 2013 represents the latest in a series of makeover moves, this time aimed at shifting use of its bedrock productivity suite to the cloud. Early hands-on testing suggests Office 2013 is the 'best Office yet,' bringing excellent cloud features and pay-as-you-go pricing to Office. But Microsoft's new vision for remaining nimble in the cloud era comes with some questions, such as what happens when your subscription expires, not to mention some gray areas around inevitable employee use of Office 2013 Home Premium in business settings." Zordak points to coverage of the new Office model at CNN Money, and says "More interesting than the article itself is the comments. The article closes by asking 'Will you [pay up]?' The consensus in the comments is a resounding 'NO,' with frequent mentions of the suitability of OpenOffice for home productivity." Also at SlashCloud.

5 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. In the end... by Sprouticus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft would be best served by making it free or nearly free for home use and subscription for business use. It is the same model they use for AV, and it works fairly well. Enterprise businesses need Enterprise level support and tools, they will pay because they have no choice.

    Sure, you will probably lose some small businesses, but they were not going to upgrade anyway.

    This way Office stays the defacto productivity suite, new users (kids) use it at home by default, and businesses have to either retrain every user on a new suite, or pay for office (hint, most will pay for office, no one likes being retrained).

    1. Re:In the end... by fermion · · Score: 5, Insightful
      MS is going to be competing with Google for the home user. I suspect that for the home user Google is good enough, and it is free. At one time many home users had free or inexpensive access to MS Office through enterprise licensing. I recall install such a free copy on my mothers machine years back. If such free licensing were still available, I could see home users accessing MS Office.

      In small business MS is going to competing with Google and OO.org and the derivatives.

      MS is still successful with MS Office due to file format lockin. You want to work with other firms, who are probably running MS Office.

      Although Apple Pages is not online, all storage is now online by default. This means that one can work off any Mac or iPad. Also you pay for Pages once and load on all Macs and iPad registered to your account. So there is that.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  2. Re:What about security-paranoid companies? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What about HIPPA or other similar regulatory limitations on who can see your documents?

    Seems like those would kill this sort of move just as dead.

  3. Who cares about the subscription look at the TOS by bogie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Only one person at a time may use the software on each licensed computer or licensed device. The service/software may not be used for commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating activities."

    So if your kids want to use Word to make a Lemonade Stand sign so they can sell Lemonade for .05 a cup on the front lawn? Ilegal!

    Even worse your kids want to help out with Hurricane Sandy relief by making signs and posting them around the neighborhood telling people how they can help their local non-profit? Illegal!

    Or I guess you can't even print up an Ad that you plan on hanging in the local supermarket saying you have a couch for sale?

    Btw you wanna bet MS themselves hosts templates designed specifically for these activities?

    It's time we hold these companies accountable for the crap they shove in the TOS. What Microsoft is doing is BS and they need to be called on it. Feel free to email Microsoft and tell them that you wanted to buy Office 2013 but because their TOS make both you and your children criminals, you went with Openoffice etc instead.

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  4. Re:Bought it yesterday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Agreed. For any sort of real office/administrative work, MS Office beats the pants off Open/Libre Office. The latter's functionality in terms of two major office needs (mail merges and pivot tables, not to mention scaling spreadsheets for print) sucks to the point of being basically unusable. MS Office is typical Microsoft (different than standards for no good reason; eg. the wildcard for strings in Access is * not %), but Excel and Word are simply so much better than anything else out there that for REAL work, there's no viable alternative.

    Of course, home use is a different story altogether.