Google docs isn't too bad and brings the whole cloud thing to the table fairly well
Google docs is great for collaborative work, but feature wise for regular business use it isn't even close. Disregarding the word processor it includes, the spreadsheet side lacks virtually any features one would need outside of making a basic list and despite having the ability to export to Excel it's formulas are incompatible and will break when opened up making it useless if you have to send documents elsewhere. Good docs has a long way to go.
Office isn't that expensive anymore due to Office365. Now a small business can pay $15 a year per user to have the full Office suite, a huge Exchange account, shared storage space, and hosted Sharepoint, all with full support from Microsoft rather than a locally hired tech.
A very minor not pick - the standard for law is Word Perfect. You said "share or read documents that other people send to you (such as anything in contracting, law, real estate, medical, etc)".
This really hasn't been true in a very long time now. WordPerfect does still have some adoption in the legal field, but it has been losing ground to Microsoft Office for over a decade and isn't anything close to the majority even there. The reason it was held on to for so long were for specific features like track changes and using templates and macros (rarely in law do you start from a blank document, it's always a form you are filling out details in) and courts would require documents to be in a specific format for some of those features. As time has moved on though, Word replicated those features (poorly perhaps, but they still are there) and courts started to make deals with Microsoft to get discounts.
No there isn't any such possibility. You can export your data eg. from Excel as a read-only view but you can't export from Office 365 to anything. Office 2010 "is supported now" but it won't be forever, you can't use OpenOffice or similar to access your O365 content.
That isn't true.
First, you can change your Skydrive settings so that Office365 uses OpenDocument formats by default, same with the version of Office365 you have installed locally.
Second, you can also either download from your Skydrive or edit the documents in a synced folder on your desktop, which is how most enterprise solutions I've seen using Office365 have their users access the data primarily.
Certainly with Skydrive and Sharepoint integration along with a support contract that makes it lucrative to business Microsoft gives their own Office suite a leg up, but there is nothing stopping you from using LibreOffice in conjunction with it, I do it all the time from my Linux workstation.
A number of years ago California decided they were missing out on all sorts of taxes from the movie industry, so they figured what the hell and raised the corporate tax on making a film. Instead of getting extra tax money, they lost billions because the film industry just left to film other places. Now, not only are they collecting far less because so many fewer films are made here, but we also have a crazy high unemployment in LA because of all the people whose jobs left. Not only do they collect less from the film industry, they now collect less because of higher unemployment, and pay out more.
Some times, higher taxes are not the answer. The big problem in California is with propositions getting on the ballot spending money from the general fund that just isn't there. We have so many crazy taxes on the books now my state taxes went up $600 in one year.
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Google docs is great for collaborative work, but feature wise for regular business use it isn't even close. Disregarding the word processor it includes, the spreadsheet side lacks virtually any features one would need outside of making a basic list and despite having the ability to export to Excel it's formulas are incompatible and will break when opened up making it useless if you have to send documents elsewhere. Good docs has a long way to go.
Office isn't that expensive anymore due to Office365. Now a small business can pay $15 a year per user to have the full Office suite, a huge Exchange account, shared storage space, and hosted Sharepoint, all with full support from Microsoft rather than a locally hired tech.
This really hasn't been true in a very long time now. WordPerfect does still have some adoption in the legal field, but it has been losing ground to Microsoft Office for over a decade and isn't anything close to the majority even there. The reason it was held on to for so long were for specific features like track changes and using templates and macros (rarely in law do you start from a blank document, it's always a form you are filling out details in) and courts would require documents to be in a specific format for some of those features. As time has moved on though, Word replicated those features (poorly perhaps, but they still are there) and courts started to make deals with Microsoft to get discounts.
That isn't true. First, you can change your Skydrive settings so that Office365 uses OpenDocument formats by default, same with the version of Office365 you have installed locally. Second, you can also either download from your Skydrive or edit the documents in a synced folder on your desktop, which is how most enterprise solutions I've seen using Office365 have their users access the data primarily. Certainly with Skydrive and Sharepoint integration along with a support contract that makes it lucrative to business Microsoft gives their own Office suite a leg up, but there is nothing stopping you from using LibreOffice in conjunction with it, I do it all the time from my Linux workstation.
A number of years ago California decided they were missing out on all sorts of taxes from the movie industry, so they figured what the hell and raised the corporate tax on making a film. Instead of getting extra tax money, they lost billions because the film industry just left to film other places. Now, not only are they collecting far less because so many fewer films are made here, but we also have a crazy high unemployment in LA because of all the people whose jobs left. Not only do they collect less from the film industry, they now collect less because of higher unemployment, and pay out more. Some times, higher taxes are not the answer. The big problem in California is with propositions getting on the ballot spending money from the general fund that just isn't there. We have so many crazy taxes on the books now my state taxes went up $600 in one year.