Office 2016 preview under NDA
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It is not actually too bad. I really like that it forces you to use URLs rather than emailing files to each other. It enforces some good practices. Not that MS Office isn't getting good, now, at pressuring you to do that too but Google practically demands it. I don't find Google Apps as intuitive or as friendly as MS Office or LibreOffice but I do very little with them and they work just fine.
Mostly it is just about getting used to a new tool. I can't imagine that they is anything important for which Google Apps will not work just fine. And I can totally see the value in selecting this for a new company that does not have an existing MS Office ecosystem to deal with. Having all documents be hosted and edited completely online in a wholly transparent and fully integrated way is really handy. The whole idea of needing storage for documents just vanishes. Mapped drives? Who needs those!
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O365 can give you the same or nearly the same experience with the online office apps.
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@Dashrender said:
O365 can give you the same or nearly the same experience with the online office apps.
Yes, and a pretty awesome experience with their on-premise apps with sync via SharePoint. I actually like the Microsoft ecosystem around their Office products better still. Google Apps isn't bad at all, but MS has really taken the lead on this I think. I generally prefer, quite heavily, to use locally installed MS Office but hooked up to Sharepoint so that we get all that online file hosting and shared file access stuff. That stuff rocks but it responds like you are purely local.
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IMO Google Docs is not a replacement for MS Office. It works fine in small companies that share docs internally or with other small companies. If you are a larger company and/or you work with larger vendors you are really going to want MS Office.
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Google Docs can expert as MS Office files though, right? Wouldn't that normally work just fine? And can't you send to people directly from Google Apps so that they can work on things completely within Google Apps too?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
O365 can give you the same or nearly the same experience with the online office apps.
Yes, and a pretty awesome experience with their on-premise apps with sync via SharePoint. I actually like the Microsoft ecosystem around their Office products better still. Google Apps isn't bad at all, but MS has really taken the lead on this I think. I generally prefer, quite heavily, to use locally installed MS Office but hooked up to Sharepoint so that we get all that online file hosting and shared file access stuff. That stuff rocks but it responds like you are purely local.
Is this with ODfB? I'm assuming this is only the case on things you have synced?
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@Reid-Cooper said:
Google Docs can expert as MS Office files though, right? Wouldn't that normally work just fine? And can't you send to people directly from Google Apps so that they can work on things completely within Google Apps too?
Sure but you have to have a Google account.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
Google Docs can expert as MS Office files though, right? Wouldn't that normally work just fine? And can't you send to people directly from Google Apps so that they can work on things completely within Google Apps too?
More times than not, yeah definitely they can be used interchangeably. You will run into documents that wont display correctly, though.
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@Dashrender said:
@Reid-Cooper said:
Google Docs can expert as MS Office files though, right? Wouldn't that normally work just fine? And can't you send to people directly from Google Apps so that they can work on things completely within Google Apps too?
Sure but you have to have a Google account.
right and the business world still uses microsoft office as the go to office suite
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@Dashrender said:
@Reid-Cooper said:
Google Docs can expert as MS Office files though, right? Wouldn't that normally work just fine? And can't you send to people directly from Google Apps so that they can work on things completely within Google Apps too?
Sure but you have to have a Google account.
Don't more people have those than have MS Office?
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@IRJ said:
right and the business world still uses microsoft office as the go to office suite
Is this still true? MS Office is still top, for sure. But the rate at which shops are not using it anymore seems to be increasing. There are many companies these days that don't have it, even big ones. Using it as the default interchange format is rapidly going away. It's still dominant, but is it dominant enough to say that the business world simply "uses it" anymore? I'm not sure.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
@Dashrender said:
@Reid-Cooper said:
Google Docs can expert as MS Office files though, right? Wouldn't that normally work just fine? And can't you send to people directly from Google Apps so that they can work on things completely within Google Apps too?
Sure but you have to have a Google account.
Don't more people have those than have MS Office?
Good question, I have no idea. Maybe in their home world, but after they leave school. how many of those people use any of it..
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@Dashrender said:
Good question, I have no idea. Maybe in their home world, but after they leave school. how many of those people use any of it..
Home is all that Google needs. As long as individuals have accounts, people have access to it. For people who have Google at school and not at home, you have the same problem that almost no one has MS Office at home. These days doesn't almost everyone have Google Apps at home (it's free) and almost no one has MS Office at home?
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@Reid-Cooper said:
@IRJ said:
right and the business world still uses microsoft office as the go to office suite
Is this still true? MS Office is still top, for sure. But the rate at which shops are not using it anymore seems to be increasing. There are many companies these days that don't have it, even big ones. Using it as the default interchange format is rapidly going away. It's still dominant, but is it dominant enough to say that the business world simply "uses it" anymore? I'm not sure.
While I have no numbers, I definitely think it's the go to solution. If a company decides to go all Google, then they might not have it, but if they use anything else for email other than google, they are probably using MS Office. O365 is definitely making the buy into MS Office much easier today.
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@Dashrender I agree, but MS Office used to be nearly 100% of businesses. I don't know how high, but it was high. You really could just assume that people had it. But Google Apps is in the millions of users now, that's all business users, not including home users. That's just the paying Apps accounts. So that is nearly all people who have that instead of MS Office. That's only a small amount of Microsoft's numbers I am sure, but it isn't a small number either, overall.
But it is the "everyone" having access to Google's apps that I think might be the killer feature. Asking people to have MS Office is a large financial burden. Asking people to have access to Google's apps is free, they just have to open and edit using a free, personal account if they don't have the commercial one or the files can be edited in MS Office, I believe. So it appears, I think, that Google might be winning at the "viral" game of making their apps thrive in more environments. So that it is quickly becoming Google Apps that people are familiar with and have access to in the way that people used to think about MS Office.
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Sure, but MS now offers the same thing. Anyone who opens a OneDrive account also gets Office Online and SharePoint like access to those files as well.
That combined with Outlook.com, MS appears to offer nearly everything the same. That combined with how many people already know Office, at least in the First World, I think it will stay there for awhile yet.
MS has bought its way into many colleges as well - Like Apple back in the day, a lot of colleges now use Office 365, and students can get very cheap personal accounts on top of the free account they get through the schools.
I think MS has done the right thing, even though they are years behind, but they now have similar offerings to Google.
Now they just need to start selling companies on that. Heck maybe they need to look into what they can do to create a desirable chromebook like device - I'd say the Surface with RT was that, but that project seemed to fail - the message was to confusing to end users... but I think they can do it again correctly this time.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
@IRJ said:
right and the business world still uses microsoft office as the go to office suite
Is this still true? MS Office is still top, for sure. But the rate at which shops are not using it anymore seems to be increasing. There are many companies these days that don't have it, even big ones. Using it as the default interchange format is rapidly going away. It's still dominant, but is it dominant enough to say that the business world simply "uses it" anymore? I'm not sure.
I don't know of any large companies (500+ employees) that don't use Microsoft office. I am sure there are some that don't, but I have yet to see any.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
@Dashrender I agree, but MS Office used to be nearly 100% of businesses. I don't know how high, but it was high. You really could just assume that people had it. But Google Apps is in the millions of users now, that's all business users, not including home users. That's just the paying Apps accounts. So that is nearly all people who have that instead of MS Office. That's only a small amount of Microsoft's numbers I am sure, but it isn't a small number either, overall.
But it is the "everyone" having access to Google's apps that I think might be the killer feature. Asking people to have MS Office is a large financial burden. Asking people to have access to Google's apps is free, they just have to open and edit using a free, personal account if they don't have the commercial one or the files can be edited in MS Office, I believe. So it appears, I think, that Google might be winning at the "viral" game of making their apps thrive in more environments. So that it is quickly becoming Google Apps that people are familiar with and have access to in the way that people used to think about MS Office.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said businesses. I see no reason to use MS Office at home anymore. Many of the school districts are adopting Google Docs which give the kids access to submit their homework and edit their docs online. The kid's parents no longer have to buy MS Office.
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@IRJ said:
@Reid-Cooper said:
@Dashrender I agree, but MS Office used to be nearly 100% of businesses. I don't know how high, but it was high. You really could just assume that people had it. But Google Apps is in the millions of users now, that's all business users, not including home users. That's just the paying Apps accounts. So that is nearly all people who have that instead of MS Office. That's only a small amount of Microsoft's numbers I am sure, but it isn't a small number either, overall.
But it is the "everyone" having access to Google's apps that I think might be the killer feature. Asking people to have MS Office is a large financial burden. Asking people to have access to Google's apps is free, they just have to open and edit using a free, personal account if they don't have the commercial one or the files can be edited in MS Office, I believe. So it appears, I think, that Google might be winning at the "viral" game of making their apps thrive in more environments. So that it is quickly becoming Google Apps that people are familiar with and have access to in the way that people used to think about MS Office.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said businesses. I see no reason to use MS Office at home anymore. Many of the school districts are adopting Google Docs which give the kids access to submit their homework and edit their docs online. The kid's parents no longer have to buy MS Office.
The same is now true of Office365.
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@IRJ said:
@Reid-Cooper said:
@Dashrender I agree, but MS Office used to be nearly 100% of businesses. I don't know how high, but it was high. You really could just assume that people had it. But Google Apps is in the millions of users now, that's all business users, not including home users. That's just the paying Apps accounts. So that is nearly all people who have that instead of MS Office. That's only a small amount of Microsoft's numbers I am sure, but it isn't a small number either, overall.
But it is the "everyone" having access to Google's apps that I think might be the killer feature. Asking people to have MS Office is a large financial burden. Asking people to have access to Google's apps is free, they just have to open and edit using a free, personal account if they don't have the commercial one or the files can be edited in MS Office, I believe. So it appears, I think, that Google might be winning at the "viral" game of making their apps thrive in more environments. So that it is quickly becoming Google Apps that people are familiar with and have access to in the way that people used to think about MS Office.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said businesses. I see no reason to use MS Office at home anymore. Many of the school districts are adopting Google Docs which give the kids access to submit their homework and edit their docs online. The kid's parents no longer have to buy MS Office.
My nieces switched to Google Docs because they moved to Chromebooks at home. They love it as it is all free, the devices are dirt cheap and they collaborate with their mother on projects. So she can check up on their homework WHILE they are doing it!
