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Microsoft Brings Office To Android Smartphones For Free
Mark Wilson writes: After a few weeks in preview, Microsoft Office is now available for Android smartphones. Despite Microsoft's mobile-first, cloud-first philosophy, it has actually taken some time to bring the world's most popular office suite to Android phones — it joins the tablet version of the suite that was released last year. Just like the tablet editions, the phone versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint won't cost you a penny, allowing for the viewing and editing of a range of files when on the move. There is a cloud focus with support for not only OneDrive, but also Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box, and Microsoft says it has made changes based on the feedback received during the preview period.
So, what does this really mean? Is the payment option viewing ads? Privacy rape? Viewing ads and privacy rape?
104Mb download just for Word on its own.
Wow. Seems like all those years of bloated coding are coming back to bite them.
Install office with very limited use on a mobile, and you lose half a Gig of internal storage on your smartphone and still might have to pay for an Office 365 subscription.
I think there is something suspicious about all these freebies. Are they pre-installed with NSA spyware and backup spyware in case you succeed of deleting primary malware?
While you can download the apps for free, you get a lite version of the apps. To get full functionality, you have to have a paying subscription to Office 365.
If you know what I mean.
Live Free or Die!
Considering how poorly files move between different versions of Office for the same platform (and some times even between the same version for the same platform!) I look forward to now being able to trash my files on the go. Thank you Microsoft, I have been wishing for some time that you would find a way to make my files even more fragile yet.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Our company switched to Office 2013 and forced us all to upgrade. I tried creating a powerpoint. Simple bullet point list. The cursor moves fluidly with some kind of animation etc. But selection, cut/past etc seem to have a lag that can not be explained. I am running it on a souped up high performance finite element solver machine, 16 cores, 64GB RAM, high powered graphics card etc. It seems to be pushing this one drive and cloud storage a lot, makes you jump through the hoops to save anything to a new local directory. As though it keeps synching the document with remote autosave, there is this annoying lag.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Or you could just use Google Docs in your browser. Unsurprisingly also supports Google Drive.
So MS makes a pointless app, and makes it free!
I do not develop big complicated documents on my phone.
For my phone, a standard text editor is more than enough.
If somebody emails a .docx file, I'll wait until I am on a computer with LibreOffice.
Ah, the sweet nostalgia of BSOD on my smartphone.
Table-ized A.I.
Did we get an update for the iOS version to save to Google Drive? Last I used it about a week ago we didn't!
... as that would show the absolutely low quality of their code
What is directly known about Microsoft code doesn't support your argument. For example, after the Windows 2000 code leak several people did their own analysis of the code. For example, kuro5hin concluded:
In short, there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.
Note that last sentence: Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.
More recently, static code analysis was done on the legally released Word for Windows 1.1a by PVS-Studio. They concluded:
I have found very few strange fragments. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, I found the code to be skillfully and clearly written. Secondly, the analysis had to be incomplete, while teaching the analyzer the specifics of the old C language wouldn't be of any use.
In short, there may be many reasons not to pay for Microsoft's software. Your perception of the quality of their code is not one.
Sorry,
But we've figured out we don't need crappy MS versions of software anymore. The more I use Google Docs/Drive the more I realize how bad Microsoft products actually are. And the world has discovered that Microsoft is not the only game in town, in spite of nearly 30 years of dominance. All things come to an end. This has been coming for some time. Good Riddance.
Now, Microsoft have a Cloud interface that works on all platform (Win, IOS, OSX, Linux), Google don't.
Now, Microsoft have a Office suite that works on all platform (WIn, Ios, Osx, Linux) Google don't.
It's amazing how a year change in the software market. Yesterday google was the leader, now they aren't there.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I tried it before, and I still prefer SoftMaker:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=softmaker&c=apps
I was creating Word and Excel documents, for free as they were included in the OS, more than a decade ago on my trusty iPaq 6315.
Why is this news?
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
See subject.
It's bad enough that MS is harassing every phone/tablet manufacturer to pay some sort of "Android tax", because of "reasons". I'd like to see a single manufacturer stand up to this kind of crap, but so far that's not happening. I don't want MS anywhere near my phone.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
In the case of iDevices, they got Apple's help in exchange for screwing over most Apple owners. Cook has a burning hatred of his customers that don't upgrade, and in the case of Microsoft, he demanded they not allow anyone without at least version 7.1 use Office. He got his way. Only a small percentage of devices can run Office without paying Apple hundreds of dollars. Calling spending hundreds of dollars free is disgusting. You're better than that /. Please stop spouting corporate nonsense. Apple hates us and has screwed us with Office.
Allstate has left children in the cold to die
Are you talking about the incident in Boston when they left a mother and four children with no place to go after their house burned with their car in the garage? The father was in Iraq at the time. It took a child dying and the father getting killed in Iraq before they finally got enough bad press to where they caved and paid a fraction of the claim. In Allstate's defense, they didn't do anything any other insurance company would have done in the same situation. They saw someone weak that they could prey on. Every dollar you collect on premiums earns you pennies of profit, but every dollar not paid on a legitimate claim earns you an entire dollar.
Just because they allow me the *privilege* of downloading the app without me paying doesn't make it 'Free'.
90% of the app is locked behind an Office 365 Subscription.
With all the money that Microsoft charges for patents used by Android, I'd hardly call it free.
Microsoft is just trying to get everybody locked in to their proprietary format.
TNSTAAFL
ffs, let me save documents to the device. tyvm.
So you mean 13MB? That's still pretty big.
See subject.
(Pretty simple, really.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."