Google Launches New Assault On Microsoft Office 126
Hugh Pickens writes writes "BetaNews reports that Google has announced the global availability of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, which went into beta late last year with technology that builds off Google's acquisition of DocVerse. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is essentially a plugin for Windows versions of the productivity suite (2003, 2007, 2010). 'The plugin syncs your work through Google's cloud, so everyone can contribute to the same version of a file at the same time,' says Google Apps product manager Shan Sinha. Additionally, Google announced a 90-day trial for Appsperience, described as 'a way for companies that currently use cumbersome legacy systems to see how web-powered tools help their teams work together more effectively.'"
collaboration doesn't look as good as in gdocs (Score:3)
Google docs has real-time collaboration (you can see other people's edits as they happen). The video [youtube.com] on collaboration for Google Cloud Connect in MS Office says you have to save before edits are synced to all collaborators. Sounds like a recipe for lots of sync inconsistencies to me.
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Google docs has real-time collaboration (you can see other people's edits as they happen).
So if I type "cockcockcockcock" at the keyboard when the boss comes into the room because, well, it helps me think, Sir, anyone else can read that change immediately? Does no-one these days realise how much productivity is lost by the ability for people to instantly and frequently interrupt you?
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This is why I no longer use IM at work. (Note, my employer encourages IM for communication between employees.)
People don't even try to solve a problem, they just interrupt me.
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So if I type "cockcockcockcock" at the keyboard when the boss comes into the room because, well, it helps me think, Sir, anyone else can read that change immediately?
Yes. Though this is a terrible evil, the silver lining is that this feature also allows you to instantly see when something has been updated.
Does no-one these days realise how much productivity is lost by the ability for people to instantly and frequently interrupt you?
Do you not realize how much productivity is lost when you have two people working on the same shot because the spreadsheet hasn't been updated?
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Seriously, I am going to lose sleep over this...
And I'll probably be expected to try and recoup those lost z's at home.
Doh!
Stupid Cloud...
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Google docs has real-time collaboration (you can see other people's edits as they happen).
So if I type "cockcockcockcock" at the keyboard when the boss comes into the room because, well, it helps me think, Sir, anyone else can read that change immediately? Does no-one these days realise how much productivity is lost by the ability for people to instantly and frequently interrupt you?
s/cock/Cock of the Walk/
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I fail to see what this collaboration has to do with people walking in and interrupting you.
I've used real-time collaboration in Google Docs before, and it's brilliant. I've used it on spreadsheets, not word processing documents, but I assume the word processing interface is similar.
In spreadsheets, you're working along and suddenly a box appears on the right saying "Frank is also editing this document". It shows the cell I'm currently editing highlighted in one color, and the cell Frank is editing highl
So this is basically, a distributed filesystem (Score:3, Informative)
But without locking or versioning. That'll work a treat. Fastest finger wins.
Sorry, forgot, we get to spend our lives on conference calls now, we can all play distributed lock manager. Like dungeons and dragons but corporate.
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I think youu're looking for 'Apartments and Accountants'
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I think youu're looking for 'Apartments and Accountants'
Or Sheldrakes and Kubeliks
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I'm saying that Google Docs lacks features because there is no /optional/ and /visible/ locking of /parts/ of the document, and because you don't get a choice about when to commit your changes (making them visible to others). I thought it was Mac users who go about telling you that a lack of features is for your own benefit, but I guess Apple and Google aren't that different.
Anyone who actually uses Office for more than writing employment covering letters knows that the Office 2010 + SharePoint is actually
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I'm not saying that missing features benefit people who miss them. I certainly would not see any value in using Google Docs for anything except for the real-time collaboration, which works a lot better than various people here seem to think. It would certainly be useful to optionally have more control about when committing happens, or to have some reassurance that conflicts are presented to the user instead of possibly overwriting useful work (I hope they do this right but have never seen it occur - when ed
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No. It was a comment meant to be funny. Get a sense of humour installed. I think Debian have one in their repo.
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Dude, they have the best engineers, and even went so far as to recreate a file system based on an old one, not once, but twice, GFS and GFS2, I am sure I would trust their word, about how concurrency is kept on their systems...it might have lots of syncs, but they have even more checks in place for those syncs.....and even then, they have backups of backups of backups, so you are in good hands with google, probably even more then M$, that which you use (windows) everyday without thinking twice....!
Re:collaboration doesn't look as good as in gdocs (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't have multiple people editing a word document anymore than you can have multiple people driving a car on their way to the office.
To make such a far reaching statement, I assume you've actually tried it, right?
Well, I have and i find it works surprisingly well. We have two women where I work; one works mostly on the internet side and the other mostly on the b&m side. They both have to collaborate on creating things like custom order forms and promotional literature, etc. to send out to new clients.
Before I got there, one would start something in Excel or Word and make it a little ways, then email it to the other who would do some more work then email it back. They would do this however many times it took until they were satisfied.
The first thing I did was get them off of Office, then I showed them how to use Google Docs and the collaborative editing features. I've never seen two happier women over a word processor in my life. Now, what used to take days takes less than an hour. It's amazing. The little green cursor pops up on one screen and the red one on another and away they go.
The simultaneous editing of documents, in my opinion, makes up for any lack of features that Google Docs may suffer from in comparison to Office. It's unbelievable how much more productive people are when they take the time actually try it out and get used to it.
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You can't have multiple people editing a word document anymore than you can have multiple people driving a car on their way to the office.
To make such a far reaching statement, I assume you've actually tried it, right?
Yes I have. My wife tries to drive the car with me every time we go somewhere. She is entirely undaunted by the fact that it never really works very well.
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This is not a good place to insert a car analogy. Try Libraries of Congress or something else.
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This is not a good place to insert a car analogy. Try Libraries of Congress or something else.
Imagine a school bus full of kids learning to backseat drive.
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You can't have multiple people editing a word document anymore than you can have multiple people driving a car on their way to the office.
To make such a far reaching statement, I assume you've actually tried it, right?
The first thing I did was get them off of Office, then I showed them how to use Google Docs and the collaborative editing features. I've never seen two happier women over a word processor in my life. Now, what used to take days takes less than an hour. It's amazing. The little green cursor pops up on one screen and the red one on another and away they go.
Do you think he meant a "Word" doc or a text doc?
He may have meant the inability to easily collab on MS Word.
I do agree about Google Docs tho... REALLY, REALLY cool.
I'm starting up a company right now, decentralized, in the cloud,
using Google Docs, EC2, etc. And you can just sit there and
work on a docs and suddenly see the colored cursor appear and
words, adjacent to yours. They see your cursor in color too, so
they won't overtype you. It's pretty much like the difference
between one worker building a house...
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I don't mean to be rude, but Google Docs is free. Sign up for it and take it for a test drive. I mean, really. It's got some serious balls.
Does google docs audit and track all changes by users in documents or is it food for corporate political wars as users attempt to bugger up parts of a document that are other people's responsibilities and how readily accessible is it.
It tracks all changes to all Google documents. Not, obviously, to Office documents you upload to it since Office doesn't natively track such things. In any Google document, just click on "File" / "View Revision History" and you get a Wikipedia-like list of revisions. Click on one and you see "before" and "after" highlighted neatly, along with the user who made the
Re:collaboration doesn't look as good as in gdocs (Score:4, Insightful)
Erm, so in your opinion, every time more then one person have to work on the same file at the same time (aka collaboration), sitting at the one, same computer, it's a "clusterfuck"?
Do you even understand what collaboration features are designed for? They are there to recreate the experience of multiple people sitting at one monitor and keyboard, working on one document. This is common office work in most companies, from more complex presentations to folks in accounting going over same account sheets and everything in between.
This is supposed to be this way. It has always done that way before, when these people sat in the same room. Nowadays everyone is at their own workstation, collaborating in the cloud is essentially trying to recreate that same thing. You can do stuff like "hey, what do you think of this here?" "no, this here is wrong", etc while being on other sides of the planet without having to essentially email the same document back and forth a thousand time.
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I think at one time collaboration was a group of people in a room and a stenographer and/or a secretary transcribing the changes of the people in the room.
web-powered? (Score:2)
Just because it's on the Internet it doesn't mean it's "web-powered", Google. Version control isn't the same as a shitty web app, even if this is the embrace&extend Google are trying to subject MS to.
(Of course, unlike regular version control, for some reason a third party is needed and permits itself to datamine your repository.)
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What do you mean? This plugin allows live synchronisation over the internet, how is that not "web-powered"?
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Indeed. The Internet is also powered by AOL.
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Indeed. The Internet is also powered by AOL.
Especially so in Libya.
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While I find the term "web-powered" quite painful, we do call plenty of things "web services." In this case, I would assume that's how this is implemented. These days, services are beginning to unify their APIs. Rich clients and ajax-based browser app are starting to share the same web service APIs. So if it's implemented as a web service, I wouldn't take offense to the term "web-powered," even though it reeks of marketing.
How is this an assault? (Score:5, Insightful)
The title does not seem to go with the article. It sounds like Google is adding more functionality to Microsoft Office, free of charge. What am I missing?
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It's like when MS released Services for Netware/Unix/Mac - a shitty implementation for "legacy" clients as gateway to the full MS experience. In that case, the downgrade was to NT server. In this case, it's via "Appsperience" to Google "Apps".
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Slashdot is no different to most mainstream media these days - everything has to be classed using aggressive words like "war", "assault" or something else dramatic. The odds of using such emotion in a headline increases when dealing with articles about Microsoft. I don't expect things to change one bit, because it seems to work.
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Re:How is this an assault? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are taking aim at SharePoint. Now users can collaborate on documents without needing Microsoft's solution (SharePoint).
BINGO! (Score:2)
What a day to not have mod points ...
I'm hoping our company tries this instead of implementing SharePain for the ten people who need to do collaboration. In fact, I'm mentioning it tomorrow!!!
Re:BINGO! (Score:5, Insightful)
SharePoint is good for a lot of things, but I would put Google Docs like collaboration pretty far down the list. It's great for large projects. I've seen construction companies and law firms leverage it very successfully. But for 10 people, Google Docs is probably all you need.
The thing I like about SharePoint is the way it supports processes and work flows. For example, if you have something like a construction bidding process where you're often filling out the same forms over and over again, and a lot of people are involved at different phases of the process, you can setup a work flow to route the documents from person to person. SharePoint handles the noticing "Hey Bob, it's time for you to sign off on X, Y and Z! Click here."
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Share Point is great for a lot of things. Unfortunately, being a trustworthy repository for data and making good use of servers are not some of those things. Your example also:
This is a great example of Microsoft taking a problem a
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Share Point is great for a lot of things. Unfortunately, being a trustworthy repository for data and making good use of servers are not some of those things.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Not trustworthy? Not a good use of servers? I've seen 1000+ users on a 4 server SharePoint farm accessing over 10TB of data, day in, day out.
This is a great example of Microsoft taking a problem and creating a huge piece of software that makes the problem bigger. If you are often filling out the same f
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You have no idea what you are talking about. Businesses live on standardization. If you create a new way of doing things for every project you do, you're an idiot.
I don't think his issue was with standardization or having workflows.
His problem was that instead of getting rid of paper-based forms all that is being done is to make them word documents and semi-automate filling them out.
Why are the documents being created in the first place?
Back in the day you filled out order forms to buy stuff out of catalogs. Imagine if Amazon.com worked by giving you a word document template for an order form, with a PDF catalog on their website. You filled that out, and emailed it
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This is a great example of Microsoft taking a problem and creating a huge piece of software that makes the problem bigger. If you are often filling out the same forms over and over again, there is your problem. Now, you must either stop filling the forms (if they are not data aquisition), or at least stop making they flow around like they were useable data (if they are data aquisition).
This is more of a case of you not understanding the problem. When dealing with the legal system, government or regulatory agencies as both construction companies and law offices do, there are legal constraints and requirements that must be followed - the IT department doesn't get to set the rules and make "improvements".
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It sounds like Google is adding more functionality to Microsoft Office, free of charge. What am I missing?
For a moment don't be Microsoft, be Google: Think three steps ahead.
Today Google is making Office do something Microsoft still hasn't implemented for companies too small (or too smart) to use Sharepoint. .doc[x].
Tomorrow the company's employees are editing documents from anywhere, changing their ideas of what the Internet can do (RIA) and that you don't actually need Office to read a
The next day the boss realizes Google has something to offer and it's much cheaper and often higher quality than the stuff he
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There are two different components of Microsoft Office:
1. The applications. Popular software that I personally feel are the best of the breed for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets. While I prefer LaTeX for documents and Matlab or Python/Scipy/Numpy for math (rather than spreadsheets), I've always had much better experiences with MS Office than Open/LibreOffice. Other options are nice but are less featureful (part of what makes them nice of course). I haven't really tried the Apple options
whuh? (Score:3)
What the hell does that even mean?!!!
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I've asked myself this many times. As a storage analyst, everyone always uses "the cloud" as a buzz word to excite their managers into spending money.
In the end it's still business as usual. disk backend, FC switched SAN. Sure it may be on demand, but when does on demand end? When I upload 14TB of documents?
You really don't get it... it scales EASIER. Fault tolerance
is TRUE fault tolerance. When something breaks in the middle
of the night, you can fix it the next day cause at most maybe
you lost 20% cycles, all the data is still there, it's still available.
You come in the morning, replace the broken item, no one even
knew anything had happened.
The entire backend "cloud" has been commoditized. Sure it
runs much better on a bunch of blades or server optimized
equipment but you can use commodity stuff until that point
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s/2011/1985/g
s/storage cloud/VAXcluster/g
OK, now I get it.
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Dilbert explains it to you
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-01-07/ [dilbert.com]
and related
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-09-09/ [dilbert.com]
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Google has already addressed the whole security issue (relevant document is here here [google.com]). Microsoft's own EULA's language is so thick and customer unfriendly that they could have the right to sleep with your daughter and kick your dog and you wouldn't be the wiser.
As for the part about the keeping data on your computers, what prevents you from keeping a backup of your gdoc cache, I do it and makes it so that I can keep the warm and fuzzy feeling of having my documents with me as well. I prefer this becau
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Google has already addressed the whole security issue
Have they addressed how they will deal with law enforcement data mining? This is a big problem with data that is stored in the "cloud" - creative attorneys can easily find ways for your data to be residing in jurisdiction where your rights to protect confidential information are weaker or non-existent.
In any event, entrusting confidential data with a 3rd party is a risk - a person doesn't have to be a criminal for confidentiality to be critical.
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That being said, I have two issues with google that they need to find a solution for before I could consider switching, they fix these and I would switch in a heart beat.
First, I want to be able to limit the IP addresses that are allowed to log into corporate accounts... I don't want people on their home computer
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Sorry, but if you permit computers that you have no control access to such documents, you already have no control over where the documents go. Making them pass over your VPN won't improve the situation, unless you have a trusted computing infrastr
Potentially Shady Opportunity for Google (Score:1)
The spin from Google on this seems legit, but it also seems like they just want to have access to all our shit in case they want to snoop. I mean how hard would it be for them to read all the documents or pass on our footprints to other parties?
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They will charge you a fee to set it up in-house if you don't trust the googleplex. Remember kids, the first hit is free, the addiction not so much (see Microsoft Office)
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I don't believe that's true. If you mean the GSA, that's just search, not docs. The "docs for enterprise" stuff all mentions hosting on Google's cloud, even if you get your own domain. I'd love a link that proves me wrong.
Embrace, Extend.. (Score:2)
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If this was really "Embrace & Extend", the Google addin would "embrace" the Ribbon (love it or hate it), and "extend" their addon buttons to another tab (like say, Acrobat does).
Instead, they choose to have an ugly old-style toolbar occupying more vertical screen real estate.
Good Luck! (Score:2)
Which essentially means that the file is versionless.
Good luck restoring to an intended state if someone fucked the thing up.
CC.
Re:Good Luck! (Score:4, Informative)
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Especially now after you enlightened me, I see that I failed to take into account that users who collaboratively edit a document in a typical business environment are much more accustome
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You've got to love Slashdot, where everyone has a say, and no one ever RTFA (or even uses the product commented on).
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Yes, I love slashdot, because it always gives me the chance to at least virtually encounter people that virtually are that much based in the realms of reality that implications rendered by concepts are beyond what their imagination can grasp.
I indeed love that 'groundedness' .
CC.
"Contributing to same file at the same time" (Score:2)
its as if a lot of people are in the same chat room, but producing a document.
Just posted it on the other thread about it. (Score:2)
Not what I was hoping for yet (Score:2)
I would like some way of using Word to edit stuff stored in Google Docs. All this seems to be is a way of using Word to upload stuff.
Anti MS comments aside, Word is a better Word Processor than Google Docs. Docs is very good but it is not what World+Dog is familiar with - yet...
If someone can point me to how I can use Word to open stuff on Docs, edit it and save it back there that will do the trick. Then we will just need to make an Open Source plugin for stuff like Open Office and Office Libre and it wi
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Insync. Google Docs on your desktop [google.com].
How good is compatability? (Score:1)
I'd assume it would have to be near perfect otherwise it would suffer from the same problems facing Openoffice/Libreoffice...unless i'm not fully understanding the concept of google docs...
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Google Docs is only a poor replacement for MS Office. Either you squeeze what you have to do into what Google Docs supports or you leave it. I think it is clunky and has a terrible UI, too. But as always with Google it it as free as air and everyone is breathing it.
Did /. become CNet? (Score:1)
How is this news for nerds? More like News for Office Drones!
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How is this news for nerds? More like News for Office Drones!
The "office drone" is worth $6 billion each quarter to Microsoft.
You mght want to think about what that means when you are trying to develop and promote an alternative office suite or an integrated office system.
That means that consumers spent more than $1 billion on Office last quarter. According to investor relations director Bill Koefoed, a lot of those sales are upgrades in place from Office 2003, but consumers are also buying Office 2010 when they buy new PCs -- or upgrading from the free Starter Edition that comes with many new computers.
Businesses are still the main customer for Office, however, and they spent nearly $4.6 billion on it and related products during the quarter.
Office Saves Microsoft's Bacon For The Second Straight Quarter [businessinsider.com]
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Was anyone else disappointed..? (Score:2)
Was anyone disappointed when they found out that this didn't mean Google was rolling tanks out out of mountain view?
This sounds more like an assault on... (Score:1)
Threatened by change? (Score:2)
The comments here about how collaborative editing can't possibly work beggar my experience and office reality.
Do most folks here really think that passing around versioned copies of Word docs in email is the most efficient way to work together? Or is it just what you're familiar with because you've been sucking on Microsoft's teat for 2 decades?
Docs works. It's not great as a word processor, but it's totally made up for with the collaboration that a team can do in realtime. Try it before you bag on it, b
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Is real time collaboration a good thing? (Score:1)
I write documents a lot of it. Most of the time, one person is in charge of either reviewing, commenting or making edits. I am unable to imagine why 10 authors sitting across the globe HAVE the urge to work on a document at the same time.
Have /. users done this type of real-time collaboration? What is the scenario? Did you guys find it useful?
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Yes. Used it extensively, both personally and for assignments I've given to students. Your "editor makes changes as the document evolves. There's both creation and brainstorming happening at the same time. What GDocs lacks in formatting is no problem since your "editor" can take the final document and make final formatting changes in a more featureful editor. Collaborative art for projects is even more amazing to watch.
Microsoft: Been There, Done That (Score:5, Informative)
All registered users of Microsoft Office 2010 enjoy the free Sky Drive service, a 2 GB storage space in "the cloud".
Not only can you share files with others, but it integrates directly with the "Save" command in Office as one of the destinations.
Oh, and the people you invite to collaborate with you don't even have to have Office. They can log in (for free) and edit your documents via the web-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It's rather slick, and yes, it works in Firefox and Safari.
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I have MSO2010 (hardly ever need it, but still) but for online collaborative editing I always use Google Docs. Both are 'free' and look OK, but I trust Google to do a better job at their search integrates with GMail so I can find relevant files in the bulk fast.
Would be nice if not for the bugs (Score:1)
The worse of both worlds (Score:3)
Sorry, but I'd much prefer a standards-based solution (ODF documents on a WebDAV server, maybe).
They're not assaulting anything with Docs sucking (Score:4, Insightful)
They've spent the last year making Docs suck more and more.
1. Disabled offline editing, no replacement in sight but they promise it'll be fixed.
2. Locked you into fixed page width and are unable to change how things are laid out.
3. The new editor removed tons of customization because it was a big rewrite. I can understand getting basic features working before working on advanced ones but you can't roll out a new version of your product with less features than the original, critical features people are relying on.
This is a problem with software as a service. If you fucking HATE the ribbon you can stick with Office 2003. There's the issue of not being able to work as easily with people using the new version of Office but at least your internal documents are fine. Using Docs, you have to upgrade when everyone else does and if they screw up something you like, there's no sticking with the old version.
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This is a problem with software as a service. If you fucking HATE the ribbon you can stick with Office 2003.
Yes, but just a long as it is maintained, patched, etc... This is the problem with commercial software : it is developed not in the user's interest, but in it owner's.
With open source software, there is no owner, just a maintainer; if he starts acting bad (or looking as such), someone will start a fork, just like LibreOffice did with Oracle's OpenOffice.
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What are your difficulties with MS Office? Be technically honest, IOW illustrate why any problem-solving you have attempted has failed.
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I keep trying to install it but it always fails. Where the fuck are the linux binaries?
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Four problems.
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It costs too much when the competition is free. Of course my problem solving didn't fail. I successfully moved us to Google Docs.
I hope you're not calling Google Docs "free"! Even if the "standard" edition is satisfactory, your payment right now is supplying your (i.e. your clients') data to Google for mining. What do you think Google are, a charity?
Office doesn't have real time collaborative editing. Google Docs does.
No. [itpro.co.uk] Note that, as in any proper versioning system, you sync when you're ready - not with every letter you type - although the areas of a document on which people are working will be shown (and optionally locked) if desired. If you really want "real time" letter-by-letter then you're a ti
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Let's get this straight: MS Office doesn't have RT collab -- MS Office + Sharepoint does.
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Yes, and it is intellectually dishonest to claim that only Google Apps support realtime collaboration just because the server component forming Microsoft's offering doesn't come by default with its Office packaged product.
Google makes the majority of its money from advertising and from mining your data, i.e. you are the product. You're likely to get everything thrown at you because Google wants as many products as possible to sell to advertisers. Microsoft actually sells software, i.e. you are the consumer,
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I hope you're not calling Google Docs "free"! Even if the "standard" edition is satisfactory, your payment right now is supplying your (i.e. your clients') data to Google for mining. What do you think Google are, a charity?
Where in my post did you see me say anything about putting any client data in Google Docs? That's right; nowhere. Not to mention the fact that we are in the wholesale sports apparel business. I'm not worried about Google trying to muscle in on that anytime soon. And furthermore, Google's stock in trade is using information for targeted ads. So, I get to use all of this great free software and all I have to do in return is see an ad that might, $DEITY forbid, be relevant to me? Oh, the humanity!!1 The
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Where in my post did you see me say anything about putting any client data in Google Docs? That's right; nowhere. Not to mention the fact that we are in the wholesale sports apparel business.
So you do or you don't have clients? I'm confused.
I'm not worried about Google trying to muscle in on that anytime soon.
That's probably not unreasonable - I mean, it's not as if Apple uses its "app store" to knock out competitors to its own offerings, so allowing some big company to be your gateway is always safe. However, why aren't you worried that Google might sell on information to a large competitor? That an individual Google employee will sell it? Accidentally leak it? Provide it to the government without warrant? Google are not audited, they're not regulated, and they'
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That's probably not unreasonable - I mean, it's not as if Apple uses its "app store" to knock out competitors to its own offerings, so allowing some big company to be your gateway is always safe. However, why aren't you worried that Google might sell on information to a large competitor? That an individual Google employee will sell it? Accidentally leak it? Provide it to the government without warrant? Google are not audited, they're not regulated, and they're infants in terms of reputation.
And providing information to help sponsors.
Arms manufacturers win by selling to both sides.
OK, I'll give you $50 in cash if you give me your credit card number. I promise not to abuse the information. My promise is legally binding. Today and for the rest of my soulless, corporate life.
Whichever anti-paranoia medication they have you own... please double it. You can thank me later.
Don't you mean the other way round? MS Office gives proper versioning control, i.e. locking of parts of document (if desired) and commits precisely when the user wants to commit. Whereas Google offers a cheap mess, like giving 10 people a sheet of A4 and allowing them all to write on it at once. Sure, it's fine for kindergarten drawing, but unmanageable for efficient, real work.
For decades, people have been huddling in front of one computer editing the same document. Now they don't have to huddle. They can be on opposite sides of the world. If you don't see the benefit of being able to do that in actual real time then you are just ignoring the blindingly obvious. Since you don't appear to be that stupid, I have to wonder why that is.
What nonsense. I have 10-year-old machines running Office 2000 perfectly with near-instant responsiveness, while I have to watch the "web page" that is Google Apps redraw.
Oh, so you were just talking smack when you said
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Whichever anti-paranoia medication they have you own... please double it. You can thank me later.
I'm paranoid for suggesting that Apple uses its gateway to neuter competitors, when developer agreement terms have been in place against duplicating functionality in Apple apps? I'm paranoid for accusing Google of cooperating with government for profit, after the Great Firewall of China acquiescence? I'm paranoid for stating that Google sells information about its products to advertisers, when it's owned Doubleclick since 2007? I'm paranoid because I think that Google may accidentally leak information, even
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MS Office and LibreOffice kill GDocs. Also Microsoft has made deals so Novell's OpenOffice and KOffice have better compatibility thant Google. Google just don't want to take responsibility.
Lol... hey... your pager is blowin up man!
Google Docs(type of offering) is the future. Being
constrained to one computer is the past.
Those that cite compatibility are ignorant to the fact
that if you START workflow on a new platform, the
compatibility isn't an issue.
Sure, lots of places have legacy office systems.
And lawyers and doctors used to be all paper. Who
but a fool would go to a doctor or lawyer now that
didn't do a majority of their stuff on a computer?
Exactly.
Same thing with the cloud, same thing with
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I'm still amazed at the stranglehold that MS Office maintains - I've not owned or used a copy of Office in more than 10 years. Plenty of alternatives exist, and they work great.
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OOI, which others have you actually tried?
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It's all about verbs. If they said, "waggles free widget" you'd just scroll off. But hey, "assault" sounds aggressive, doesn't it. Doesn't mean that the actual syncing tool is greater than Halo on Android, but ow you can plop your data in two places.
Isn't that "assault"? I mean, c'mon.