5 ms·

"I give Microsoft ten years until their first quarterly loss." Hahah - If i had a penny for every time I've heard that. I'm an apple user myself - but MS offer

"I give Microsoft ten years until their first quarterly loss." Hahah - If i had a penny for every time I've heard that. I'm an apple user myself - but MS offers all of what you are describing your daughter to be using as well - in fact I know many companies are already rolling their staff onto Office360 and so on. As for google docs etc - if you ever had to really crunch data - nothing comes close to Excel even today. I'm not saying they should keep doing what they are doing - I do think it's foolish to assume that they dont know whats going on in the world outside and aren't capable to grow with it.

geophile 13y ago
It doesn't matter that Office360 does blah blah blah -- the next generation of office workers aren't using it now, and that's a problem for Microsoft. I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM.
- tanzam75 13y ago
  > I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM. But Microsoft is not ignoring Google Docs. The Office web apps are also free, have more features than Google Docs, and have better compatibility with Office files. Microsoft is even bundling desktop Office for free with certain tablets, such as the Dell Venue 8 Pro. There have always been cheaper products. Microsoft even used to sell one. Back when Office was $500, Works was $100. And yet -- even back then, companies opted to pay the extra money for Office. The only difference now is that the lower-priced product is free. But as a percentage of the worker's salary, Microsoft Office has actually gotten cheaper over time.
  - geophile 13y ago
    I have some kool-aid I'd like to sell you. Desktop versions are close irrelevant to this discussion. Office web apps are completely irrelevant, I think. I've never met anyone who has ever used them. 100% of people I know who use web apps use Google's.
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      No, thanks, I prefer to drink water. Sounds like you bought too much Kool-Aid. You must be tired of drinking it. I recommend that you return it to the store. Office 365 (not 360) already generates over a billion dollars in annual revenues -- and that includes the desktop versions of Office. Even the consumer version of Office 365 Office has already sold about 2 million subscriptions. And there are 50 million users of the Office web apps. If you don't know any of them, then perhaps you should think about whether your own experiences are skewed, and unrepresentative of what's actually happening out in the marketplace.
VLM 13y ago
"ever had to really crunch data" Most people don't, that's why it doesn't matter. I volunteer as treasurer of a cub scout pack. We switched from Excel to Google docs spreadsheet. We're using about 1/1000th the power and limitations of google docs, and google's capabilities are expanding faster than our needs are expanding. I don't care if Excel would be "better" because we'd only need 1/100000th its capabilities or it would take 20 times longer to learn how to use. Most business tasks run into exactly the same scaling issue. Business decisions are never made by qualified techs on the basis of pessimism, they're always by completely technologically unqualified managers in a hurry on the basis of optimism.

geophile 13y ago

It doesn't matter that Office360 does blah blah blah -- the next generation of office workers aren't using it now, and that's a problem for Microsoft. I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM.

tanzam75 13y ago
> I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM. But Microsoft is not ignoring Google Docs. The Office web apps are also free, have more features than Google Docs, and have better compatibility with Office files. Microsoft is even bundling desktop Office for free with certain tablets, such as the Dell Venue 8 Pro. There have always been cheaper products. Microsoft even used to sell one. Back when Office was $500, Works was $100. And yet -- even back then, companies opted to pay the extra money for Office. The only difference now is that the lower-priced product is free. But as a percentage of the worker's salary, Microsoft Office has actually gotten cheaper over time.
- geophile 13y ago
  I have some kool-aid I'd like to sell you. Desktop versions are close irrelevant to this discussion. Office web apps are completely irrelevant, I think. I've never met anyone who has ever used them. 100% of people I know who use web apps use Google's.
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    No, thanks, I prefer to drink water. Sounds like you bought too much Kool-Aid. You must be tired of drinking it. I recommend that you return it to the store. Office 365 (not 360) already generates over a billion dollars in annual revenues -- and that includes the desktop versions of Office. Even the consumer version of Office 365 Office has already sold about 2 million subscriptions. And there are 50 million users of the Office web apps. If you don't know any of them, then perhaps you should think about whether your own experiences are skewed, and unrepresentative of what's actually happening out in the marketplace.

VLM 13y ago

"ever had to really crunch data" Most people don't, that's why it doesn't matter. I volunteer as treasurer of a cub scout pack. We switched from Excel to Google docs spreadsheet. We're using about 1/1000th the power and limitations of google docs, and google's capabilities are expanding faster than our needs are expanding. I don't care if Excel would be "better" because we'd only need 1/100000th its capabilities or it would take 20 times longer to learn how to use. Most business tasks run into exactly the same scaling issue. Business decisions are never made by qualified techs on the basis of pessimism, they're always by completely technologically unqualified managers in a hurry on the basis of optimism.