5 ms·

There are a few IT people and Managed Service Providers I deal with that have become pretty adept at cutting over small and midsize businesses from G Suite to M

by posguy 4y ago

There are a few IT people and Managed Service Providers I deal with that have become pretty adept at cutting over small and midsize businesses from G Suite to Microsoft 365. The office suite is better, the email client configurability is significantly better (from what they claim, I'm a Thunderbird on Linux person), and you get single sign on too. My firm uses our own mailserver (with DKIM and SPF), LibreOffice for doing our cost comparisons for clients and other document generation needs, and has been pretty happy with that. We are split across Windows, Linux and MacOS, the sole tether for about half of our Windows users is a dependence on iTunes backup (since apparently they don't trust iCloud, ugh...) for their iPhones, preventing a migration to Linux.

zootboy 4y ago
> the email client configurability is significantly better I'm gonna have to disagree on this one. Outlook 365 is ass-tastic. It doesn't even have feature parity with the web app, and is full of weird bugs and limitations. Just off the top of my head: - Moving old messages between folders in the native app requires downloading the full message then uploading it again - Calendar subscriptions sync from web client to native app, but not the other way around - Calendar colors on the native app are limited to a preset pallete of 8, while the web app allows custom colors - The new mail notification icon sticks on if another client reads the new message - Cannot sync certain types of rules with the exchange server - Warns you about "dangerous attachments" if you open an attachment that _you_ just added to an unsent email - No way to block specific addresses / domains besides a local-only(!) rule to always put them in junk
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  The Microsoft E-mail client is an absolute shitshow. It's another huge regression in the Office suite. I got new computers for my parents and made the mistake of getting them Windows machines because that's what they're familiar with. I set up Office, but Outlook is so defective that it was literally unusable. The final straw was that it defies Windows's own system-wide font-size setting. I needed to make the font bigger so my mom could read it, but Outlook ignored it... leaving her In box totally illegible to her (and barely legible period). I was pleasantly surprised when I installed Thunderbird (after not trying it for 20 years) and everything worked well. It even handled the 15,000+ messages in her AOL In-box (yep, AOL). Beyond the E-mail issue, Outlook 365 continually stopped working and badgered both my parents for MY account credentials, so I shitcanned it and replaced it with LibreOffice... on my systems as well. I find it less reprehensible than Office.
- technofiend 4y ago
  Thinking about just giving everyone Macbooks instead of O-365? Think again. The Mac client is similarly limited vs the classic Windows fat client. Microsoft is balancing on a knife edge because if the non-Windows fat clients and O-365 had feature parity, there would be no compelling reason for many to run Windows. Unfortunately the user community is caught in the middle. Even so to address the original question - it's been my personal experience that moving docs between MS users and LibreOffice also exposes lots of funny formatting issues, particularly in Word docs. If you're not exchanging docs with others that's one thing, but IMHO you don't want to submit your resume or any equally important document written in LibreOffice format even in compatibility mode. Better to print to PDF.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Honestly, I don’t think that’s true anymore. Microsoft runs so many different release channels between Windows. Office, Office 365 and Mac wtf knows when new features arrive.
    - technofiend 4y ago
      Not sure which part you don't think is true any more? So I'm switching from a Windows virtual desktop to a Macbook and the experience I'm talking about is as of the last few weeks. Hopefully MS will eventually catch up and gain feature parity everywhere, but as stated above, there's at least one disincentive for doing so; namely it'll impact Windows revenue.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        I don’t think MacOS is really a second class citizen anymore. Excel lags a bit but is greatly improved from a few years ago. I’d argue Mac Outlook is a better product. Microsoft’s revenue is driven by subscriptions and business users. Commercial customers have to pay Microsoft for Windows even if they run Macs. For individuals, losing the $60 in Windows revenue and getting a Office subscription on Mac is a win - Mac users spend more.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  It depends on the user and how they use Outlook. Microsoft’s tools for managing email are hot garbage for folks who get alot of mail. But… many folks don’t understand how to use GMail effectively with things like labels, and Google lacks alot of the things that users rely on. (Drag and drop of messages into messages, folder structure, lack of message view, etc) Unless you have a know how to be a good Gmail user, you’re gonna miss messsages. In the long run, Outlook is in the middle of a long re-engineering process and will probably be better for it. Google definitely underinvests in their products… perhaps the webifying of Outlook will drive change there.

by posguy 4y ago

zootboy 4y ago

> the email client configurability is significantly better I'm gonna have to disagree on this one. Outlook 365 is ass-tastic. It doesn't even have feature parity with the web app, and is full of weird bugs and limitations. Just off the top of my head: - Moving old messages between folders in the native app requires downloading the full message then uploading it again - Calendar subscriptions sync from web client to native app, but not the other way around - Calendar colors on the native app are limited to a preset pallete of 8, while the web app allows custom colors - The new mail notification icon sticks on if another client reads the new message - Cannot sync certain types of rules with the exchange server - Warns you about "dangerous attachments" if you open an attachment that _you_ just added to an unsent email - No way to block specific addresses / domains besides a local-only(!) rule to always put them in junk

NonNefarious 4y ago
The Microsoft E-mail client is an absolute shitshow. It's another huge regression in the Office suite. I got new computers for my parents and made the mistake of getting them Windows machines because that's what they're familiar with. I set up Office, but Outlook is so defective that it was literally unusable. The final straw was that it defies Windows's own system-wide font-size setting. I needed to make the font bigger so my mom could read it, but Outlook ignored it... leaving her In box totally illegible to her (and barely legible period). I was pleasantly surprised when I installed Thunderbird (after not trying it for 20 years) and everything worked well. It even handled the 15,000+ messages in her AOL In-box (yep, AOL). Beyond the E-mail issue, Outlook 365 continually stopped working and badgered both my parents for MY account credentials, so I shitcanned it and replaced it with LibreOffice... on my systems as well. I find it less reprehensible than Office.
technofiend 4y ago
Thinking about just giving everyone Macbooks instead of O-365? Think again. The Mac client is similarly limited vs the classic Windows fat client. Microsoft is balancing on a knife edge because if the non-Windows fat clients and O-365 had feature parity, there would be no compelling reason for many to run Windows. Unfortunately the user community is caught in the middle. Even so to address the original question - it's been my personal experience that moving docs between MS users and LibreOffice also exposes lots of funny formatting issues, particularly in Word docs. If you're not exchanging docs with others that's one thing, but IMHO you don't want to submit your resume or any equally important document written in LibreOffice format even in compatibility mode. Better to print to PDF.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Honestly, I don’t think that’s true anymore. Microsoft runs so many different release channels between Windows. Office, Office 365 and Mac wtf knows when new features arrive.
  - technofiend 4y ago
    Not sure which part you don't think is true any more? So I'm switching from a Windows virtual desktop to a Macbook and the experience I'm talking about is as of the last few weeks. Hopefully MS will eventually catch up and gain feature parity everywhere, but as stated above, there's at least one disincentive for doing so; namely it'll impact Windows revenue.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      I don’t think MacOS is really a second class citizen anymore. Excel lags a bit but is greatly improved from a few years ago. I’d argue Mac Outlook is a better product. Microsoft’s revenue is driven by subscriptions and business users. Commercial customers have to pay Microsoft for Windows even if they run Macs. For individuals, losing the $60 in Windows revenue and getting a Office subscription on Mac is a win - Mac users spend more.
Spooky23 4y ago
It depends on the user and how they use Outlook. Microsoft’s tools for managing email are hot garbage for folks who get alot of mail. But… many folks don’t understand how to use GMail effectively with things like labels, and Google lacks alot of the things that users rely on. (Drag and drop of messages into messages, folder structure, lack of message view, etc) Unless you have a know how to be a good Gmail user, you’re gonna miss messsages. In the long run, Outlook is in the middle of a long re-engineering process and will probably be better for it. Google definitely underinvests in their products… perhaps the webifying of Outlook will drive change there.