

Microsoft to launch Office 365 on June 28 - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-launch-office-365-on-june-28/9603?tag=mantle_skin;content

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xpaulbettsx
(Disclaimer: I work on Office at Microsoft)

If you want a preview of the Word/Excel/PowerPoint/OneNote pieces of Office
365, you can use them for free at <http://office.live.com> \- if you're using
OneNote locally, they'll also host your OneNote notebooks so you can access
them anywhere (as well as still use them via the desktop app)

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mikemaccana
Last time I tried this, after reading something microsoft wrote that
specifically mentioned tablets, I wasted an hour trying to hack office web
apps to run, then finally got a message asking me to install silverlight on an
ipad.

So pardon me if this seems rude, but do you have an actual web office suite,
or is this more bullshit?

Thanks. MS office has a great ui, and i'm looking forward to try a web version
of it if such a thing ever exists.

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xpaulbettsx
It doesn't work on an iPad yet. It's our first web Office release, it's still
a little rough, but it's definitely something we're putting a lot of
engineering work behind to improve.

However, you don't actually _need_ Silverlight to use it (I'm not sure what
they're using it for), I've used it on Chrome in Ubuntu and it worked just as
well. Any new'ish browser should work.

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melling
Google really needs to turn up the heat with Docs. The spreadsheet, etc need
to get a lot better if they want to steal market share from Microsoft. Office
is hard to beat.

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ams6110
Not sure I agree. A small number of sophisticated users really use Excel in
something close to its potential, but most people I know use spreadsheets for
simple lists and maybe adding up a column of numbers. If Google start chasing
Excel on features, they could find themselves on the losing side of a "fire
and motion"[1] strategy.

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html>

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Lewisham
Yeah, I use the Spreadsheet app the most. It's quicker to download all the
Javascript required to run it than it is to boot Excel off my hard drive, and
I just use it for groceries and things.

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m0nastic
I've been using the beta for a while now, and look forward to it being
launched. I must be in the small minority of people who prefer hosted Exchange
to Gmail (but oh do I), but I've been pretty impressed so far with the
functionality.

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pinhead
My biggest complaint with Google Docs is related to consistent formatting. I
am anxious to see how MS handles this. I do agree that for pure collaboration,
Google Docs is currently unmatched.

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chrisjsmith
The name sounds like we will have to pay a little bit for it for 365 days a
year...

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ronnier
I dislike names with 365, 360, X, Live and so forth. Microsoft violates all of
them :-/

