Office 2013: Microsoft Cloud Era Begins In Earnest 241
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timothy
from the click-here-to-subscribe dept.
from the click-here-to-subscribe dept.
snydeq writes "Microsoft's release of Office 2013 represents the latest in a series of makeover moves, this time aimed at shifting use of its bedrock productivity suite to the cloud. Early hands-on testing suggests Office 2013 is the 'best Office yet,' bringing excellent cloud features and pay-as-you-go pricing to Office. But Microsoft's new vision for remaining nimble in the cloud era comes with some questions, such as what happens when your subscription expires, not to mention some gray areas around inevitable employee use of Office 2013 Home Premium in business settings."
Zordak points to coverage of the new Office model at CNN Money, and says "More interesting than the article itself is the comments. The article closes by asking 'Will you [pay up]?' The consensus in the comments is a resounding 'NO,' with frequent mentions of the suitability of OpenOffice for home productivity." Also at SlashCloud.
Still Unclear When Subscription Expires (Score:4, Informative)
1) How long will I have access to my documents? According to current documentation for enterprises and small business:
When a subscription is removed, all data is permanently lost.
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/En-ca/office365-enterprises/hh143495.aspx [microsoft.com]
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-ca/office365-smallbusinesses/hh143522.aspx [microsoft.com]
2) Subscribers get an additional 20GB in Skydrive. What happens to my documents if I am using 100% of Skydrive (including the additional 20GB)? Is there a grace period?
They don't make it easy to find the information to these questions. The answers are likely the same for any other cloud service that provides a free and paid offering but why do we have to guess.
Re:What about security-paranoid companies? (Score:2, Informative)
Traditional SKU still available (Score:5, Informative)
It's important to remember that there are 2 ways of buying Office 2013 (at least for home use): Office 2013 and Office 365. MS has a nice simple comparison here [microsoft.com]. The $99/year gets you 5 computers while the other SKUs only let you install on 1 computer.
One important change for the stand-alone SKUs is the # of computers you can install on. In Office 2010, there were SKUs that let you install on 3 PCs for "Home & Student" edition or 2 PCs for "Home and Business" edition. While Office 2013 is 1PC for all editions of the stand-alone. I'm guessing this is MS trying to push Office 365 (the subscription).
If I was installing on 5 PCs, the subscription may be worth it, but I'm not sure I like the idea of my software license expiring and possibly losing data.
Re:Best Yet (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using the Office 365 trial version for a while now. I'm not really sure it's "best yet", but it doesn't feel like a step in the wrong direction, either. Really, the only thing I've noticed about it is that it has more eye candy, with more animations and and such. I'm not a fan of the "save as" page, though--it keeps changing the default save location on me.
Re:What about security-paranoid companies? (Score:2, Informative)
I think MS has an option for a "private" cloud where you get to keep the servers under your control and you still get cloud like features.
Re:No thanks. (Score:4, Informative)
That's not how it works. Everything I have in skydrive is synced to each of my systems. So my docs are always kept up to date yet are still available when I go off the grid.