As you can see - entirely unique
The beta release of Microsoft Office 2010 was made available this week, with Microsoft taking a pretty big chance by making their Office tools available online for free online just as Google Docs and OpenOffice are, well I say that, in reality – they haven’t.
OpenOffice was, and remains to be, the first entirely free and functional office suite to become available – it was essentially everything they could copy from Microsoft Office 2000 without infringing copyright repackaged and given away free and entirely open-source. Though it was far from the first of it’s kind, it was the first to become available publically, but (despite the feature of MS Office interoperability, meaning that all Word documents in .doc format could be opened and edited in the same format on OpenOffice, which suprisingly didn’t incur any legal problems) it never tempted the masses over to it. It found a niche, as many of these open-source products do, on netbooks and linux OS – meaning that today many have encountered it but few are familiar with it. It’s a shame really because it’s just as functional and probably even more efficient than Office and is free. I’m a hypocrite of course, because I had the choice of MSOffice or OpenOffice and I chose the former, despite knowing all this information, simply because it’s easier to go with the de facto standard. Interoperability is all very well and good, but it’s just simpler for me to have the same software that I use, for example, at Uni, if I can (and student deals make it much cheaper) and THAT, my friends, is what I feel Microsoft owes the success of Office to – it was the first on the scene, it conquered the market and now we’re stuck there.
Google Docs was a revolution in itself, not only was this (like OpenOffice) free and functional (a term I now dub frenctional) office tools available online, but it was the first in which the tools were browser-based and the documents and files created were stored online, under an account name, from the google site. This allowed greater functionality like sharing documents online, collaborating (it is now being used in parallel with Google Wave, a review of which will come once I get an invitation) and integration with Google tools and the internet as a whole. This has, thus far, been only a moderate success however, many people are distrusting of the cloud (much as they are of any MSOffice alternative) and want to have local copies of their documents and files, something that Google have not yet allowed an easy method to do so besides simply copying the body of the document into, you guessed it, MS or OpenOffice. Once again I call on you to cry hypocrite because I too distrust the cloud (I’ll come to Google Chrome OS soon).
As a brief aside, I should mention I’ve heard a lot of people who have, as MS clamps down on illegal copies, had messages warning them to enter their product key or else their software will be declared illegal and swifly removed. My advice to these people is to either pay or get a free alternative (I would have suggested find smarter ways to get free software but I can’t advocate it) such as the ones I’m talking about (or get the beta version of 2010 while you still can, though this is temporary).
Though I’ve banged the “MS copies others” drum to the extent that I’m getting RSI (that’s odd, I always thought it would be the excessive typing that did that) – I’ll concede that the 2010 “free browser based tools” are a piss-poor imitation of both Docs and OpenOffice. Instead of being free Office-like software available online, or being an entirely browser-based suite with online storage, Office 2010 is exactly the same as all previous versions of Office, sans Clippy. Microsoft have provided the equivalent of Google Docs storage of files, Office Live Workspace, but it is nothing more than a passive file storage service because, if you create a document you have to write it in a locally installed version of Word 2010, link it to (and then save it to) your online Workspace account. If you then want to view a document you can do so in the browser, but any attempt to edit such a document requires you to open it in a local install of 2010 and then the process repeats itself. When I heard about the free online tools, I immediately thought it would be a useful service like Google Docs; but the reality is that it’s little more than a storage of files and is barely more useful than Office 2007. The whole process is rife with Microsoft’s usual security warnings which slows down the process.
Microsoft have scaled back, just slightly, the massive changes that they made to it’s design when 2007 was released, the ribbon toolbar which baffled users has been scaled back and the classic “File” button has been restored – other than that it remains indistinguishable from 2007 save some minor colour changes.
Microsoft could do very well if they thought less about profit and more about the customer – given recent actions about illegal versions by Microsoft I can only surmise that their reluctance to make an entirely free browser based system is the fact that it would almost certainly need to be free to be effective – they would regain credibility as the company that keeps up with the consumer and probably jump on people’s distrust of cloud-based storage by allowing a function in the browser based tools to save a local version as a backup – perhaps for a small fee. Microsoft have the business experience, name and money to take what Google has already done, improve on it, steal users and monetize it – they could do it better yet they refuse to do it at all. Microsoft are, unfortunately, becoming the dusty old company that aren’t watching what’s going on in the market and hoping that by repeating what they’ve done for years and playing to what people already know, that they’ll survive; though this method has worked for years, there are limits. Microsoft needs some young blood and fresh ideas – let’s see how they do.
But, among all the shockingly bad PR decisions that Microsoft came out with during the marketing of Windows 7, they’ve finally got a video out that is actually quite funny. Clearly they focused all their attention on this instead of really new features – which may explain why Windows 7 marketing promotion was so crap because 7 is awesome.
I like it when I leave a post on a video – it allows me to slip away undetected and get a coffee.
PLAY ME OFF KEYBOARD CAT!
I personally tend to favour SSuite Office’s free office suites. Their software also don’t need to run on Java or .NET, like so many open source office suites, so it makes their software very small and efficient.
http://www.ssuitesoft.com
Open Office is good… really good but sadly for some reasons big companies and corporations don’t like rolling out free… EVER.
They have some bugbear that says “Whats the catch?”. There is no catch, so just install firefox and open office!
Thank you for the intelligent critique. Me and my neighbour were just preparing to do some research about this. I am very grateful to see such great information being shared freely out there.