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I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels li

by douche 11y ago

I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps. The one thing they really need to work on, for me to be super happy, would be their Lync/Skype platform. Either overhaul the old Lync 2013 client that they did a quick Skype reskinning on, or provide a decent API that could be used with Office365, like what they have for on-prem instances with UCMA. Lately, I've been having better luck using the open-source Lync plugin for Pidgin than with the official Lync client - lots of weird things like presence not updating, contact lists getting borked, memory leaks with the client causing crashes, etc.

johnchristopher 11y ago
> I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps. That may be because you only use a subset of Word features ? Have you tried the classic Wordpad ?
- douche 11y ago
  Wordpad is kind of in that no-man's-land between NotePad++ and doing heavy-lifting with Word. Honestly, it it easier for me to slam together an HTML document than it is to fiddle with a WYSIWYG word processor. It's got a higher chance of actually looking like what I want it to, as well.
DiabloD3 11y ago
They're basically killing Lync and making a combined Skype client that can log into multiple "Skype" accounts, including what Skype for Business is (aka Lync). Its part of their complete rewrite of Skype (that started with the Windows 10 combined Skype/messaging app that is currently in semi-beta that came out with Threshold 2).
- dorfsmay 11y ago
  Are they no longer using SIP at all?
  - douche 11y ago
    I can't imagine that they would dump the SIP protocols that they are using now for Lync/Skype For Business - there's an enormous amount of work invested both by them, and by Plantronics, Avaya, Cisco, and all the other VOIP-phone vendors. As of Skype for Business 2015, it's still SIP - S4B is more of a marketing maneuver than a real technical change. On the server side, applications built to integrate with Lync 2013 work seamlessly with S4B. The S4B client is just a reskin of the Lync 2013 client - it's a minor-minor revision number change, and still calls itself Lync 2013 on its About dialog.
    - dorfsmay 11y ago
      Is Skype using SIP? I thought they were using their own proprietary protocol?
      - douche 11y ago
        That's the confusion... Consumer Skype is still, to my knowledge, what it has always been. However, Lync has been rebranded as Skype for Business. It's still Lync, and uses all of the same SIP-based protocols that it always has, since it was called Office Communicator. I still haven't quite figured how they are going to mash the two together, or if they actually are going to. It is confusing having two completely different Skype clients on your desktop.
        chris_wot 11y ago
        It honestly makes no sense whatsoever. It caused massive confusion in the business I last worked in as users constantly opened Skype, and not Skype for Business.
        jcrawfordor 11y ago

by douche 11y ago

johnchristopher 11y ago

> I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps. That may be because you only use a subset of Word features ? Have you tried the classic Wordpad ?

douche 11y ago
Wordpad is kind of in that no-man's-land between NotePad++ and doing heavy-lifting with Word. Honestly, it it easier for me to slam together an HTML document than it is to fiddle with a WYSIWYG word processor. It's got a higher chance of actually looking like what I want it to, as well.

DiabloD3 11y ago

They're basically killing Lync and making a combined Skype client that can log into multiple "Skype" accounts, including what Skype for Business is (aka Lync). Its part of their complete rewrite of Skype (that started with the Windows 10 combined Skype/messaging app that is currently in semi-beta that came out with Threshold 2).

dorfsmay 11y ago
Are they no longer using SIP at all?
- douche 11y ago
  I can't imagine that they would dump the SIP protocols that they are using now for Lync/Skype For Business - there's an enormous amount of work invested both by them, and by Plantronics, Avaya, Cisco, and all the other VOIP-phone vendors. As of Skype for Business 2015, it's still SIP - S4B is more of a marketing maneuver than a real technical change. On the server side, applications built to integrate with Lync 2013 work seamlessly with S4B. The S4B client is just a reskin of the Lync 2013 client - it's a minor-minor revision number change, and still calls itself Lync 2013 on its About dialog.
  - dorfsmay 11y ago
    Is Skype using SIP? I thought they were using their own proprietary protocol?
    - douche 11y ago
      That's the confusion... Consumer Skype is still, to my knowledge, what it has always been. However, Lync has been rebranded as Skype for Business. It's still Lync, and uses all of the same SIP-based protocols that it always has, since it was called Office Communicator. I still haven't quite figured how they are going to mash the two together, or if they actually are going to. It is confusing having two completely different Skype clients on your desktop.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        It honestly makes no sense whatsoever. It caused massive confusion in the business I last worked in as users constantly opened Skype, and not Skype for Business.
      - jcrawfordor 11y ago