Is Office The New Windows?

Megalith

Megalith

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Satya Nadella seems to think so. I know that Microsoft and Windows are synonymous, but it’s quite obvious to see what is happening based on how the company is injecting Office into whatever it can. I do think Microsoft is doing a fine job with its apps on other platforms such as Android—but long live Windows, despite the decline.

Office workers and students both rely on Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of the suite. Google Apps (recently rebranded Google for Work) is providing some solid competition, particularly in smaller businesses and tech startups, but almost every big business in the world still has thousands of Office licenses. Rather than force Windows on users to make them use Office, Microsoft's new game plan is to make Office irresistible to anybody, no matter what device they're using.
 
Megalith said:
Satya Nadella seems to think so. I know that Microsoft and Windows are synonymous, but it’s quite obvious to see what is happening based on how the company is injecting Office into whatever it can. I do think Microsoft is doing a fine job with its apps on other platforms such as Android—but long live Windows, despite the decline.

Office workers and students both rely on Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of the suite. Google Apps (recently rebranded Google for Work) is providing some solid competition, particularly in smaller businesses and tech startups, but almost every big business in the world still has thousands of Office licenses. Rather than force Windows on users to make them use Office, Microsoft's new game plan is to make Office irresistible to anybody, no matter what device they're using.
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I mean here's the thing, if you want to work in any major business you use office. If you want to apply to any major business you use office. If you want to send a serious document to anyone and know for a fact they can open it.. well you get the point.

I'll like Google docs and I use it constantly for small things. It's useful by it didn't replace office. I've tried open office, Libra office etc many times over the years. I'm sorry but if you are competent in ms office 2007 or newer, you know just how shitty the free ones are and why they don't take off. I'm all for competition, but the reality is nothing competes with office suite.
 
In Malaysia (a racist country high in corruption), the government uses the free openoffice.
 
Skylinestar said:
In Malaysia (a racist country high in corruption), the government uses the free openoffice.
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And some some cities like Pesaro Italy have switched back. Anyhow, I'm pretty sure Microsoft has made most of it's money from Office for quite some time.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
I mean here's the thing, if you want to work in any major business you use office. If you want to apply to any major business you use office. If you want to send a serious document to anyone and know for a fact they can open it.. well you get the point.

I'll like Google docs and I use it constantly for small things. It's useful by it didn't replace office. I've tried open office, Libra office etc many times over the years. I'm sorry but if you are competent in ms office 2007 or newer, you know just how shitty the free ones are and why they don't take off. I'm all for competition, but the reality is nothing competes with office suite.
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My sentiments exactly. The free and "free" programs are fine for typing up simple documents and keeping a basic checkbook ledger, but anything more than that, and you see how superior MS Office is.

In addition to that, I use Publisher and Access, and there is absolutely NOTHING in the "free" and free programs that even remotely compares. With their tight integration with Excel and Word, it's a no-brainer.
 
So if Office runs on Windows/Android/iOS and Office is Windows, does that mean we should pause for a yo dawg?
 
I'm still on Office 2003.
It does everything I need and looks better lol.
 
jardows said:
My sentiments exactly. The free and "free" programs are fine for typing up simple documents and keeping a basic checkbook ledger, but anything more than that, and you see how superior MS Office is.

In addition to that, I use Publisher and Access, and there is absolutely NOTHING in the "free" and free programs that even remotely compares. With their tight integration with Excel and Word, it's a no-brainer.
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Exactly, the free alternatives to Office and lackluster at best. Suitable for simple things but as you said nothing compared to Office.

The tight integration between Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Access/Publisher + Outlook + OneNote + Lync is amazing. The time saved by this tight integration might seem minimal at first but when you add that time up over the course of a year Office will actually save money versus using free "alternatives".
 
JayteeBates said:
You can go up to Office 2010 before it starts looking horrid as in Office 2013.
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While that is true, a lot of our users had a hard time making a transition away from the traditional file menu to the newer ribbon menu. If you've already gotten accustomed to the ribbon menu, then the functionality is pretty much the same in Office 2013. It does look pretty awful with the default theme though.
 
JayteeBates said:
You can go up to Office 2010 before it starts looking horrid as in Office 2013.
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2016 introduces a couple of new themes that I think are pretty nice. A dark gray and colorful which themes each app by its icon color, blue for Word, green for Excel, orange for PowerPoint, etc.
 
MrCaffeineX said:
While that is true, a lot of our users had a hard time making a transition away from the traditional file menu to the newer ribbon menu. If you've already gotten accustomed to the ribbon menu, then the functionality is pretty much the same in Office 2013. It does look pretty awful with the default theme though.
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I just don't get this I remember all of the outrage and people saying how businesses were going to drop Office in droves because of the ribbon with no switch to the old drop down menus or how 2007 would require enormous retraining and thus a add lots of costs.

We transitioned well over 100,000 Office users and these things simply didn't happen, not anywhere too the degree that many were saying. I think the ribbon is an instance where Microsoft nailed it in spite of resistance. The ribbon is the UI in every version of Office bigger than phones across touch, keyboard and mouse. It seems to do the trick for a lot of folks in many different circumstances.
 
heatlesssun said:
I just don't get this I remember all of the outrage and people saying how businesses were going to drop Office in droves because of the ribbon with no switch to the old drop down menus or how 2007 would require enormous retraining and thus a add lots of costs.

We transitioned well over 100,000 Office users and these things simply didn't happen, not anywhere too the degree that many were saying. I think the ribbon is an instance where Microsoft nailed it in spite of resistance. The ribbon is the UI in every version of Office bigger than phones across touch, keyboard and mouse. It seems to do the trick for a lot of folks in many different circumstances.
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I tend to agree, I went into the ribbon really unhappy but ended up preferring it. Generally office 2010 is my flavor of choice. Not a huge fan of the styles offered in the more recent editions though. On the mention of OneNote, that is easily my most used office program bar none. It almost overnight replaced the pads of paper I hauled everywhere. It's just an amazingly good program especially when you take advantage of its word and Outlook integration.
 
heatlesssun said:
I just don't get this I remember all of the outrage and people saying how businesses were going to drop Office in droves because of the ribbon with no switch to the old drop down menus or how 2007 would require enormous retraining and thus a add lots of costs.

We transitioned well over 100,000 Office users and these things simply didn't happen, not anywhere too the degree that many were saying. I think the ribbon is an instance where Microsoft nailed it in spite of resistance. The ribbon is the UI in every version of Office bigger than phones across touch, keyboard and mouse. It seems to do the trick for a lot of folks in many different circumstances.
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These 10,000 users were clearly not state government employees.
 
A good chunk of computer users don't know the difference between Office and Windows to begin with.
 
Skylinestar said:
In Malaysia (a racist country high in corruption), the government uses the free openoffice.
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Considering the money you save it makes sense, for the odd ball things that don't work, well change your ways to make it work. Companies can't seem to grasp this. They just go straight to the "well it wont work with everything" excuse.

I've seen people lock themselves into office by using it for the most ridiculous things though like very advanced macro forms or access DBs that the company relies on for day to day operations. Office is not a programming platform, stop using it as such! I worked in IT and had to support crap like that... what a pain. A single license for office is like $600 too, it's completely absurd. It's almost as expensive as the computer itself and is only 1 piece of software.

If companies would get their heads out of their asses and start adopting open source and make it more mainstream then the compatibility issues would no longer be issues any more and they'd save millions of dollars.

Personally I've never had issues opening an Office doc with Open Office though. Basic stuff like excel with formulas translates over fine. Start to use ridiculous macros and other garbage then that's another story, but that stuff should be written as a web app and reside on a web server anyway.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Considering the money you save it makes sense, for the odd ball things that don't work, well change your ways to make it work. Companies can't seem to grasp this. They just go straight to the "well it wont work with everything" excuse.

I've seen people lock themselves into office by using it for the most ridiculous things though like very advanced macro forms or access DBs that the company relies on for day to day operations. Office is not a programming platform, stop using it as such! I worked in IT and had to support crap like that... what a pain. A single license for office is like $600 too, it's completely absurd. It's almost as expensive as the computer itself and is only 1 piece of software.

If companies would get their heads out of their asses and start adopting open source and make it more mainstream then the compatibility issues would no longer be issues any more and they'd save millions of dollars.

Personally I've never had issues opening an Office doc with Open Office though. Basic stuff like excel with formulas translates over fine. Start to use ridiculous macros and other garbage then that's another story, but that stuff should be written as a web app and reside on a web server anyway.
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Companies save money when they are more productive, as previously mentioned by me and others the tight integration of the various Office programs + Lync (or even GotoMeeting). Microsoft Office is also much more capable than OpenOffice or LibreOffice. I also work in IT and the cost savings of using Microsoft Access has been in the tens of thousands just for our IT department alone by developing custom dashboards and reports using Access instead of spending on costly overpriced reporting tools from VMWare, Solarwinds, TrackIT, etc. Yes I could have used some php or ASP.NET, etc but that takes time and time = money. Access has the framework already there for such a low price it would be asinine to not use it.

The money spent on Office will easily pay for itself in increased productivity and capabilities for most companies.

Another words, the Open Source alternatives to Office (like most open source products) simply cannot truly compete in a business environment when you look at the big picture. You can lie to yourself and pretend they can, but in reality they dont. Yes it is great that there are these open source alternatives for homes and small office use, but when you are in a position where time = money the clear winner in all cases is Microsoft Office.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
I tend to agree, I went into the ribbon really unhappy but ended up preferring it. Generally office 2010 is my flavor of choice. Not a huge fan of the styles offered in the more recent editions though. On the mention of OneNote, that is easily my most used office program bar none. It almost overnight replaced the pads of paper I hauled everywhere. It's just an amazingly good program especially when you take advantage of its word and Outlook integration.
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I'm a huge fan of OneNote and I use it a lot on tablets and 2013 (and it looks like 2016 works almost the same) is quite a bit better for tablet use than prior Office versions, particularly OneNote.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Another words, the Open Source alternatives to Office (like most open source products) simply cannot truly compete in a business environment when you look at the big picture. You can lie to yourself and pretend they can, but in reality they dont. Yes it is great that there are these open source alternatives for homes and small office use, but when you are in a position where time = money the clear winner in all cases is Microsoft Office.
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If you're going to pay some tens or hundreds of thousands a year and they spend a lot of time dealing with office documents it's simply a penny wise pound foolish type of decision to cheap out on tools that just aren't that expensive in the grand scheme.
 
heatlesssun said:
If you're going to pay some tens or hundreds of thousands a year and they spend a lot of time dealing with office documents it's simply a penny wise pound foolish type of decision to cheap out on tools that just aren't that expensive in the grand scheme.
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Exactly, I would bet that most people who use office in a business are making at least $40,000 a year; a couple hundred dollars for an Office license is nothing.
 
There's really nothing at all wrong with Microsoft pursuing Office on other platforms. Unfortunately, you need a 365 subscription to get Android's Office apps to actually do everything they can do AND Office is kinda annoying about offering to save junk to a non-local storage location. I think the usage limits are the same for Apple products, which is understandable since they wanna do Office as a service. It does mean that for personal stuff, I'm happier using something else like LibreOffice since it opens everything well enough and I don't have to worry about paying moolah. At workies, someone else is paying for the license so whatever.
 
office 2010 suck ass really! search feature was stupidly coded for example in a word document - broken and excel sheet is such a PIA when it crashes! I swear to GOD to those who hard coded office 2010 can go to hell

2013 is far better with eye candy options and major overhauled improvements
 
And if you work at a company that deals with ITAR/EAR, Google products are out. They're permanently blocked from being used on the network at all. So Office works just fine with an enterprise-wide license.
 
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