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Ask Slashdot: Can Quickoffice On Chromebooks Topple Microsoft's Office?
Nerval's Lobster writes "As we discussed yesterday, Google is bringing a Quickoffice viewer to its new high-end Chromebook Pixel, with full editing ability expected within three months. According to TechCrunch, Quickoffice-on-Chromebooks comes courtesy of Native Client. If Chromebooks prove a hit (and Google ports Quickoffice onto devices other than the ultra-high-priced Chromebook Pixel), could that mean the beginning of the end of Microsoft Office's market dominance of the productivity software space? While Microsoft has been pushing into the cloud with software like Office 365, that's also Google's home territory. But can Google actually disrupt the game?"
Insert some stupid headline "law" here.
And then insert some stupid comment about how LibreOffice is awesome (which it is, but in that case, why can't it disrupt MS Office?).
Insert a comment about how Google is evil (which they are), and how anything that runs in the browser can't be as good as something something mumble something.
And also, a quick jab about how MS sucks.
LibreOffice is much better than QuickOffice - and it seems to have had minimal impact on the juggernaut that is MS Office.
It's a bit like Google and other search engines. In theory one could come along and topple Google. In reality, the reason that Google (and MS Office) are in the position they are in is that "good enough" isn't enough to disrupt the market leader.
Think about what it would take to get you to shift from Google to Bing. Bing wouldn't need to be as good as Google, it would need to be obviously *better*.
QuickOffice doesn't have to be better than LibreOffice to disrupt MS Office - it's got to be quite obviously better.
I work in an Fortune 50 company. A Chromebook would be far fitter for the purpose for almost all the roles that Windows computers are used in now.
Anything that reduces the complexity and mess caused by Microsoft's idiotic document interchange and formatting incompatibilities would make the change well worthwhile.
I'll argue that it is not. Here are a few ways in which someone might consider another option better:
-It's heavier than some
-It cannot detach screen and/or flip in such a way to get keyboard out of the way
-The keyboard doesn't have a nipple mouse
-It can't run Windows
-It doesn't have as much ram as others
-It doesn't have as fast a processor as others
-It doesn't have as much battery life as others.
-It doesn't support pen input
The truth is, there is no such thing as 'the' greatest laptop on the market today. Everyone has different preferences and priorities.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
> Think about what it would take to get you to shift from Google to Bing.
A gun to my head and my family held hostage.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My company has its own intranet, with online document storage and email that works fine with any web browser.
Local storage on laptops etc is already being deprecated.
Even MS Office doesn't open MS Office files properly. Try opening a DOC file with Word 2007, save it in DOCX, import it it using the filter in Word 2003 and save it back in DOC format again. Yes, things break if you have a moderately complex document. Maybe not as obvious as if you imported it into OOO and then back to DOC, but it's not seamless.
The problem is that the DOC format sucks. The DOCX format sucks even more. That "standard" was designed so that there would never be any real interoperability between "implementations" unless it was the MS implementation.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Why are we discussing whether a office viewer program which does not even having editing capabilities right now and is sure not to get them for the next few months, will beat Office? Is this a joke or what?
QuickOffice is a proprietary closed source application running on one of the most locked down computers out there, the Chromebook with Secure Boot, where you can't even install Open/LibreOffice like you can do on any Windows PC and is heavily tied to the cloud and is crippled with low storage to encourage you to put valuable files on Google servers.
Why is Slashdot cheering this again?
This space for rent.