Filed under: Rumors, Freeware, Internet Tools
Fortune: Microsoft about to offer online version of Office for free
Yep. Zip. Zero. Nothing. Fortune Magazine is reporting that Microsoft will announce a free, web based version of Office to be available sometime next year.Before you ask, it appears the online version will support Firefox and Safari, as well as the ubiquitous Internet Explorer.
Is Microsoft nuts? Maybe not. The software giant is fighting free versions that do pretty much everything Office does. Microsoft apparently believes it can hook people on the free version, while getting them in the tent and anxious to upgrade to the application version that will work better and faster and have some more features.
On the Mac side, Apple sells the iWork package for US$79.00 which is cheaper than any Mac version of Office available. There is also Neo Office (free-donation requested) and Think Free Office ($49.95) along with Google Docs -- which is not as feature rich as Office but it is offered at no cost. Open Office (free) is also a possibility. There is a version for both Intel Macs and PowerPC hardware.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tevetorbes said 1:32PM on 7-13-2009
Am I the only guy who is working on a dissertation that would not be caught dead using a free online tool to edit probably the most important document of my educational career?
There's just something comforting about having everything contained on my computer and my backups, but maybe that's just me.
Seems to me Google docs (and the like) are a fun way to whip up something simple, but mission-critical docs will likely always stay on the client side (at least for this client.)
Thoughts?
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jmy4 said 1:37PM on 7-13-2009
I totally agree with that. Too many solid companies have disappeared leaving some without their work. Just look at all the photo sites.....
Johnny said 2:21PM on 7-13-2009
Completely agree. What would be nice is if there was a feature to save your document locally from an online application.
Remember how often one once might have lost documents during crashes or power outages or ended up with a completely corrupted and unusable document?
I've actually never used one, so I'm not sure how these online applications work as far as saving your data. Does it perform auto-saves as you type? Is it as reliable as modern desktop applications (and the OS)? If it were streaming your keystrokes directly into your document located on the server, it could potentially be more reliable. Most modern applications tend to keep a pretty solid auto-save of your document as well as a backup of the last saved state in a lot of cases, but that wasn't the case about 5-10 years ago. It all depends on how they implement it.
russ d said 2:51PM on 7-13-2009
I had my laptop hdd and back up drive crash within a week of each other. About the only documents I had afterwards were the ones saved in Google docs. Docs auto-saves all the time, and accessing it from any computer is super useful when your macbook pro has become a paperweight. I agree, it's not very feature rich and I wouldn't rely on a browser-based app for a big 200 page document, but for all the word processing I do, its more than enough.
oboewan said 9:21PM on 7-13-2009
Am I the only one who would be at least a bit uneasy writing my most important document ever using Microsoft Office? At least Google Docs keeps cloud backups.
Dan Woods said 4:13AM on 7-14-2009
Redundancy is the Key.
Having your most important documents saved in multiple locations is most important. Save early, save often.
Assuming your using a Mac running Leopard, make sure Time Machine is properly set up before you begin and keep regular backups to iDisk or something similar.
If you prefer using an online document service like Office Live or Google Docs, or an in-house document management system like Google Apps or Sharepoint, find out exactly what backup policy is used.
Make sure your browser is stable; Even browsers with crash protection, like Chrome and Safari (with Snow Leopard) can crash so if you're doing any research, use a second instance of a browser.
forddorr said 1:53PM on 7-13-2009
Last we I un-boxed a new 24" iMac - inside was a disc for MS-Office 2008 (student edition) with a registration key printed on the label. Since when have they been doing that?
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Richard Ward said 2:01PM on 7-13-2009
It's hard to compete with free. I think this is a smart move on Microsoft's part, however when people are looking for free software, they don't want strings attached so unless "Office: Web" is absolutely amazing, I'll stick with OpenOffice or give my money to someone else (iWork) if I want to spend money on software.
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dagamer43 said 2:11PM on 7-13-2009
As impressive as Office 2010 is, I'm waiting to see how good the next version of Office for Mac is going to be. Hopefully it won't totally fail like Office 2008 was running on Leopard (hint: total failure when using Spaces!)
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Kevin Hansen said 2:29PM on 7-13-2009
One other "office" option to consider is Lotus' Symphony product. Related to OpenOffice in some ways and a nice (free, multi-OS) option as well. symphony.lotus.com
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droslovinia said 2:34PM on 7-13-2009
I wrote my dissertation in Word, but I have written hundreds of pages in Open Office over the past few years, and it has plug-ins that allow me to import/export to google docs and zoho, so it has been the best of both worlds for me. Office 2008 is all right, but it does too many of the things that I'd never do (processor/space overhead), and adds too much extra code to the text for me to be able to do the things I want to do. I wouldn't pop anything too mission critical on just a web-based service, either - that's nuts. On the other hand, it really makes it easy to collaborate with others and do the occasional "touch-up" if you have an online version available for that purpose.
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philpoccia said 2:38PM on 7-13-2009
My biggest problem with online apps like this is that they are not feature rich. Google's word processing app is a glorified text editor.
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bioadam said 2:48PM on 7-13-2009
Personally, I think the free desktop and web based office suites are more than adequate and in some areas have innovated past Microsoft Office. Lotus Symphony has it's own web browser for crying out loud. Unfortunately, legions of office drones have put so much of their lives into Word and Excel that they will never switch unless forced to. Long after Microsoft Word took over, I kept hearing seeing Wordperfect overlays on keyboards. Resistance to change is especially unfortunate now, considering most companies would really benefit from dropping their software budget to zero.
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K said 3:40PM on 7-13-2009
I've not touched Office '07/'08 since leaving uni (and not needing dynamic referencing feature which was all I used it for).
Now I'm a teacher, and I find iWork is brilliant for desktop-publishing documents and formatting exams/booklets quickly and in such an aesthetically pleasing way.
Just finished a 60 page booklet for a biology subject, and there's no way I could have laid it out so easily in Word '08 as I have done in Pages '09.
Google Docs is handy though, for quick collaboration (e.g. brilliant for wedding planning, etc.), or if you don't have access to a client-side app, and it's certainly a VERY viable option for education institutions.
I just wish my school would flick over to the FREE Google Apps, instead of throwing money at MS every year...sigh.
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Viet said 6:38PM on 7-13-2009
@#3 Johnny - you can download your files from Google Docs locally (with options as a doc file, text, pdf, rtf, html, open office, etc).
It saves automatically online to the cloud periodically with options to click save manually too.
Working within a company with employees/staff, Google Docs has been so extremely crucial for us to share basic documents, etc.
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pUpPy said 7:01PM on 7-13-2009
FAIL!
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Shahryar said 9:45AM on 7-14-2009
I have a sprint mogul and one of the things I've been wondering about is being able to sync my google docs documents with my cell phone (I only do it with word and excel files on my computer). But if Microsoft has office online, then I could just use that and (I assume) sync w/ my Windows Mobile PDA easier. I would prefer to use Google documents though since I have my gmail up all day.
My Mogul is a piece of crap and I'll be moving to a Palm Pre or the new Blackberry Tour soon so perhaps it will be easier with that.
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L. Jeremy said 1:38PM on 7-17-2009
oh yeah. the trouble is online apps. 'cause Iwork has autosave doesn't it? a *** office suite with over 4 years and 4 versions and they don't have an autosave feature? what the hell is that?
i've lost (on tuesday) a thesis proposal i was doing for my PhD, and i was already late. a great writing, a great text flow, clear, simple and all that i wanted to explain. then, after finishing the damn work i was doing the formatiing, accidentaly pressed "iwork.com" button and voila! pages crashes leaving me with the few pages saved a couple of days before, losing over 10 pages of solid dense text.
oh yeah.. and then i found out that there is no way whatsoever to retrieve this work 'cause this pearl of programmin doesn't have an autosave feature! something so basic as breaks in a car. WTF were they thinking?...
and apparently WTF was i thinking. guess Google, with his Big Brother style of recording everything to the cloud is a far better proposal than half baked "lots of cutes but not much substance" apple iworks.
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