We want one throat to choke - Corporate America
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Microsoft readies Google Apps challenger
DEVELOPER OF BLOATED SOFTWARE Microsoft will release the latest version of its obsolescent Office productivity suite on Wednesday, 12 May.
While Microsoft is used to dealing with threats of the security nature, this time the Vole has noticed that Google is set to overtake its long-standing cash cow by offering low cost, standards compliant applications that manage to do what most users want.
Given that it ran out of useful new features for Office after the introduction of Clippy, the Vole will also include Office Web Apps (OWA), ostensibly to sweeten the deal.
As this is Microsoft, it has intentionally crippled the functionality of the OWA versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Onenote in order to maintain some justifiable reason for punters to have to shell out hundreds of pounds for its 'productivity' suite.
In fact Microsoft is pitching its OWA as an extension, with OWA Excel not even able to create charts. This sort of hit and miss functionality won't help those users who are looking for basic, reliable and above all cost-effective office applications.
Microsoft's Office 2010 is trying to build on the unmitigated success that the firm enjoyed with its previous version, launched in 2007. That release did more to confuse, infuriate and above all shove supposed 'open standards' onto users who were unfortunate enough to install the software. However Office 2010 is unlikely to pursue such an aggressive departure from the past, especially now that Microsoft has competition on a number of fronts.
The problem for Microsoft is that while its Office suite still rakes in the cash, Google has already said that it will aggressively pursue the development of its Google Apps product. The problem for the Vole isn't that Google is producing a cut-down word processor for next to nothing, but rather that Google is targeting its core customer base, large enterprises through small to medium sized businesses.
For years Microsoft had to contend only with Openoffice, which is finally maturing into a viable alternative to Microsoft's Office set of products. Given not only that Openoffice supports truly open file formats but also runs on a variety of operating systems and above all is free, one has to wonder how many more times the Vole will be able to swindle lots of money from punters by offering little in the way of new, useful features.
To help you make your own minds up about OWA, The INQUIRER was privy to a pre-release trial. We won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say, we weren't overly impressed.
Those who want to 'upgrade' can do so from Wednesday, when Microsoft will unleash Office 2010 to extract a few more tens of billions of dollars from its slavishly hooked loyal customer base. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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When MS came out with Vista, that was my cue to start looking for another OS. Now, half my office (about 10 units) runs on Ubuntu. Rather than dicking around learning Vista menus, I dicked around learning Ubuntu, and now, I'll never have to learn another OS interface again because Ubuntu will remain stable and consistent no matter what the version, so I won't have to slow down my business to retrain all my staff. (Side benefit... my Ubuntu units can run forever without reboot. All my Xp units had to be reboot every week or so, because it would start to go wonky. My trouble calls have dropped to zero)
When MS came out with MS Office 2007, that was my cue to start looking for a different office suite. Now, my ENTIRE office runs on OpenOffice 3.2. Instead of dicking around trying to learn all the fugly new menu stuff in MS Office 2007, I spent NO TIME learning how to use OpenOffice because it looks like and works like a "normal" word processor and does everything I need it to do. Again, no retraining staff.
Oh ya, people, remember that swearing at some one you disagree with is the last bastion of a weak argument.
Calling the author names and hurling obscenities appears as though you are trying to divert attention away from the fact that you are just plain wrong, and you know it.
(dicking and fugly are not actually swears and I was not swearing at the author)
Hey, who said that The Inq writes unbiased news articles?
If you don't like it, don't read it.
MS is like Rome and it's peaked already.
How many of MS products are growing market share?
Office - openoffice is good enough for most people most of the time. That is for small businesses and casual users, and it can most stuff ok. So why pay for the very difficult to use Office 2007 with it's very complicated and unintuitive ribbon toolbars?
Why did MS launch such a hard to use product as Office 2007? That ribbon shit is so bad, lol, how did that make it out the door?
And that's a prime example of why MS are not growing. You take your eye off the ball in a global market and someone else will take your place.
Google, nobody 15 years ago, and now one of the most important players in IT and growing massively.
Microsoft, can we say the same about them? Where are there great products apart from mice and keyboards?
As people get more used to using a different Operating System then Windows will become less relevant. As mobile phones get smarter and easier, a pc will become less relevant.
Microsoft have been playing catchup for so long it's a joke. They had 2 good products, Windows and Office, and that's about it. And those products are old, still bringing in the money, but their market share keeps dropping.
Google apps doesn't compare to office in any way shape or form.... It's nice that it's web based, and so I use it, but I still use ms office more. Web apps are slow compared to the real thing and are useless when you don't have internet.
Open office is way slower than ms office and it doesn't have all the functionality.
There may be a day ms office will be in trouble, but I don't think it's this year. ms office + exchange + ocs is a pretty nice combo.
And... lets face it, big companies don't pay full price for ms software, they get partner or gold certified and get tonnes for free or heavily discounted and/or they get volume license agreements.
I'm also not sure why the odf vs docx stuff really matters. Most public documents are distributed as pdf anyways, and a company can mandate which office suite you use internally.
Can we stop the childish, insipid,useless editing of news that Lawrence and that other guy try to peddle in lieu of their lack of wit which is mostly just degradation of whatever they don't fancy?
I don't use office. Because I don't need to. I am really getting tired of this website.
It seems it has to be centered around the iPad. It has to automatically deprecate anything Microsoft or Apple, etc.
Look, if you are an ardent open source fanboi, then get out of the closet and go write for an open source website. Please do fuck off and leave your unwanted biased opinions in your witless mind.
We, The Readers, come here to find witty articles, which are now rarer and rarer because of people like you.
yeap
When we get to the average Joe user most will be perfectly fine with Open Office. Its good for the basic user but there is nothing remotely close for businesses like Microsoft Office.
BTW That Microsoft bloatware runs circles around anything else out there. Do not even try and compare Open Office or Google to what Microsoft has in Office its not even remotely close. Because it looks like Office doesn't mean it performs like Office.
If you believe it is then you are the most basic of a user and dont utilize the full potential of the Microsoft Office suite and its integration abilities.
Most users will be perfectly fine with what Google and Open Office offer but again for Business you would be crippling yourself not to use Microsoft Office.