Microsoft flings Office apps for Android slabs at world+dog Microsoft has once again made its Office apps for Android tablets available for download, this time opening up the preview program to all comers. The software giant first offered the fondleslab versions of its Android Office apps to a limited trial group in November, but shut down its sign-up page not long after, once it had …
A lot of people have really taken the piss out of Microsoft over the years. At the end of this video, you can at last see what its founder does with it.
Wow. We needed real-time collaboration, Microsoft office was laughably pathetic, I showed my boss google docs, and it blew him away. I also pointed out the security benefits of cloud storage, where documents arent emailed around, just links to docs, and everything is secured with 2 factor auth.
We have gone fully into google apps for work. And it's working out great. When you think about how shafted Sony got with a small leak at the top rattling down everywhere else, it's clear this wouldn't have happened in a correctly configured cloud, and if it did, it would have been contained.
We needed real-time collaboration, Microsoft office was laughably pathetic
Long time Office user here.
At my company, we're currently trialling Google docs, and for collaboration it blows Microsoft out the water. No more pissing about with emailing files about (and documents ending up where you don't want them, forgetting to check-in to CVS, people making changes to v2 when v5 is the latest, people trying to edit the same file.
Never used SharePoint then?
Has it's detractors but does all of the above perfectly well for us.
Up to 10 people working on a document at once, in-place document management (no more attachments sent via emails, just links).
For those of us who work in large companies (who are MS houses) and hosting on the cloud is not an option, does all that is required and a bunch more.
" I also pointed out the security benefits of cloud storage, where documents arent emailed around, just links to docs"
File, Save & Send, "Create an email that contains a link to this workbook"... not sure it could be much simpler.
As for security.. well, you store your confidential documents on Google servers in the US, me, I'll save them on my computer sat right here in front of me, and back them up on other devices physically located in the UK and not accessible via the internet. You can't hack a hard drive over the internet if it's not plugged in.
Comparing the Android Excel and Sheets apps, even a quick look at Excel shows it has far more about it than Sheets, which is truly awful.
Wow, I looked at Google docs and our IT security pointed me to the security flaws in cloud computing, the DPA regulation, FSA regulation and general worry about how "££$"!$"!£$ Google Docs is for actual security and then showed me the notes from an IT Security conference in 2014 he attended which listed the security flaws and bad practice Google / Android has, was and is in general for anything corporate. And we ran screaming from Google Docs.
Hope you are not meant to be looking at the DPA and FSA rules. (Don't even mention PCI or the GSX network) Which would rule out govt, insurance, financial, banking and the civil service. (but not NHS)
....but In app purchases... Errgggg that reads of money grabbing like the new photoshop cloud thingy.
I see they are listed as having In-app purchases.
Word is 115 MB. Excel 125 MB.
Word. Kind of slow. Works with my Work Office 365 account. Can open work onedrive files, but can't save for some reason (normal win8 style non useful error message).
Works with dropbox, and can save in subfolders unlike the phone app.
Excel could see my files in onedrive, but could not open them. Worked fine with dropbox.It's a separate install, but I didn't have to log on with Excel, it used the word logon.
I'll have to play with them more to know if they are better then other android office apps, or just slower.
>So, yeh, go ahead and make stuff for other people but not your own product range.
It makes sense. A Windows tablet owner is unlikely to ditch MS. The (future) problem for MS is Android in business which leads to Google/Linux in business. Long-term, Apple is likely to be too expensive for mass adoption in business, despite their current success.
Unless we get all new apps from scratch which cut out massive amounts of bloat, a tablet is always going to be underpowered - either in terms of CPU or battery. The trick is to "do less," which is why porting desktop apps to tablets will always lead to unhappiness. My last desktop struggled with large documents in MS Word for ages. MS assumed small documents and re-paginated every time anything moved on the screen. I'd far rather have a beautiful default font and have my email in plain text than HTML or even RTF. Nimbus Sans L will do just fine under KDE, as does whatever Apple use in MacMail. Its a trivial example, since tablets render HTML ok, but the additional complexity is my point. Web pages are relatively small, business documents, not so much, especially when some bright spark decides to use a massive JPG on the title page and in headers as part of the company branding. Word appears to be single threaded, because that kind of setup struggles on my quad-core i7 - what hope for tablets?
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