Google smacks Surface with free Quickoffice for Android, iOS Google has reduced the price of its Quickoffice tool to nothing on Android and iOS, a move Microsoft won't appreciate. Google scooped up Quickoffice about a year back and made it a part of Google Drive. Doing so meant Drive users could edit Microsoft Office documents. The Chocolate Factory has now made Quickoffice available …
Google is still a tax - just on your time and privacy...
Yup, that is a payment in a different currency. It may be worth noting in that context that you pay MS once for the product, whereas Google you'll pay the rest of your life - your personal data isn't returned when you stop using their service, and you have agreed to a license to your IP into perpetuity (read the ToS - you'll find it soon enough).
I'm in two minds about the cloud wars that have started.
They're both wanting to collect and hold a huge quantity of personal data about people.
Whilst I rarely touch MS with anything less than a cattle prod I'm inclined to think their offering might be better simply for the reason that I don't think they're competent enough to do anything with the data.
"Anyone who had the danger os on their phones will know just how good Microsoft are when it comes to backing up and recovering data."
You mean Windows Phone? Not sure why that's the danger OS - it's far more secure than the other current options, and Microsoft don't SPAM you for life with the contents of your data, and there is no Malware like on Android - and as far as we know the NSA can't remotely control your camera / microphone like they can on Android...
You are correct about the backups though - If you logon to a new Windows Phone it restores pretty much everything including all of your applications from the last automatic cloud backup....It's really fast and completely seamless.
Almost - they killed its financial viability and locked lots of corporations in to a now-regretted dependency on IE5/IE6 which even MS can't/won't port, even as 2nd class application, to later versions of Windows.
But Netscape's legacy is still around as Firefox, and doing not too badly.
All I can remember about IE 5/6 was their shitty and inconsistent support for HTML and CSS and a complete determination to keep them outside the standards the rest of the world was working to. I think the biggest legacy of those versions of IE is the fixed width WEB site...
I'm sorry Steve. Could you put carriage returns before char 80
on all your lines please. Only you see I'm reading this on a portrait
screen, and the fixed width of the bloody website means I keep
having to scroll left and right to see.
All I can remember about IE 5/6 was their shitty and inconsistent support for HTML and CSS and a complete determination to keep them outside the standards the rest of the world was working to
Funny that. I've seen that happen with the MS Office formats too, so even that wasn't *cough* innovation *cough*
Office is going to go the same way as VisiCalc and WordPerfect.
They dragged their feet about windowizing their interface and lost market share to office.
As less PCs are being sold and surface is a damp squib Office is now losing market share to both QuickOffice and iWorks, to the point where outside the desktop they'll be irrelevant :o
Really? So you're too young to remember the MS-haters spouting exactly the same bumph about how StarOffice was just CERTAIN to kill MS Office when it was given away as Open Office? QuickOffice will be nothing more than a reader for documents produced in MS Office, as phones (and even most tablets) are good for consumption but crap for production of documents. Production will still largely be done on desktops and proper laptops, and MS Office (or Office365) will still be the tool of choice.
"Not even with Google Docs, which can ALSO access Google Drive...." Apart from the fact Office365 already has this with the real productivity suite, not the shallow clone, have you read the terms on the Google Drive license? Google gets to use your docs as they like, in perpetuity, even after you delete them, which implies they keep copies of all that stuff you may have decided was too embarrassing/incriminating to keep.
"Google gets to use your docs as they like, in perpetuity, even after you delete them, which implies they keep copies of all that stuff"
I suspect that's just butt-covering in the event that a Google employee cocks up and lets people's files out into the wild somehow. Remember, Google has a lot of lawyers, and T&C documents get written by those lawyers. They'd be thinking of the worst cases and covering their arses. Particularly after that WiFi thing people got all upset about (over what was essentially nothing).
I'm not saying Google's all rainbows and candy, but I seriously doubt they want to keep the worlds files on, er, file just so they can sneak a look next Tuesday when the programmers are bored.
"Office is now losing market share to both QuickOffice and iWorks"
Clearly you would like to think so, but that simply isn't the case. Office is still growing revenue - especially via Office 365 which is growing rapidly:
http://betanews.com/2013/06/03/shock-survey-37-of-orgs-plan-to-adopt-office-365-within-24-months/
Depends, many older options did not work very well, maybe Quickoffice will work to a "good enough" standard?
Still, has MS not been in "protect Windows cash-cow at all costs" mode the last few years, it could have make Office properly available on IOS (at least) and Android and seen much more sales. Oh, and saved 1B$ in write-down on the unloved WinRT fondlslabs...
Most office apps on Android are complete arse, barely more sophisticated than Wordpad or at a pinch, MS Works. I've got Polaris baked into my Asus Transformer and the bloody thing doesn't even recognise half the keyboard navigation keystrokes forcing me to poke at the screen to move the cursor around any appreciable distance.
I think if I were expecting to do any serious word processing or spreadsheets on the go I'd just buy a Windows tablet.
I've found Documents To Go to be pretty good. I first tried it out because at the time there was no PDF viewer worth a damn, but since then I've found it's pretty good for Officey stuff too. I've not done anything hugely complicated with it, but thus far it hasn't had any problems with the random selection of documents I've put through it.
+1 for Documents To Go - I've used it since first switching from the older Windows Mobile platforms when the HTC Desire first came out, and got it direct for about £6 back then. Polaris looks all fancy, and shows a few things that DTG doesn't, like cell outlines on spreadsheets (but at least those that are there are maintained when saving). However, DTG is easily good enough to use in place of the Mobile Office apps on the old HTC Kaiser et al that T-Mobile use to rebadge as their Vario range.
"if you wait long enough you'll be able to get one free with a burger :)"
I'm not talking of Windows RT, I'm talking of Windows. There are already Windows tablets running x86 processors with similar battery life as ARM chips. If I was looking for something for word processing I would pick one of those over an Android tablet any day of the week.
It's not just the quality of of the office suites on android which is an issue but lack of a proper printing infrastructure. And keyboard / mouse support is generally terrible. All things that seriously impact on the ability to produce rather than consume information.
"Google's just taken away any reason for Steve Ballmer to consider productivity apps on non-Microsof mobile devices before his departure."
I don't agree. People will pay money for MS Office on Android and iDevices even if the competition is free, for the same reasons that they pay for MS Office on Windows and OSX even though Libre Office is free.
People will pay money for MS Office on Android and iDevices even if the competition is free, for the same reasons that they pay for MS Office on Windows and OSX even though Libre Office is free
And, i think, if they've gone for the subscription model of Office 365 then (at least the phone version) is free already.
Except they can't because they used the VERY generic term "Office". They can trademark the complete phrase "Microsoft Office", but not the word "Office" because it's too broad. Therefore, QuickOffice (which is different enough in name and logo to MS Office) would get a pass. Also, Microsoft would have to answer why they didn't make such an assertion with StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice previously (there is IIRC a statute of limitations for filing a trademark infringement claim).
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