scanning directly into OneDrive via the device’s camera
I absolutely love the suave and understated - I might even say bashful - specification of this giant security hole.
Did anybody actually ask for this?
Microsoft is emitting a raft of tweaks to its OneDrive offering this month, but has yet to address the elephant in the room. Or rather, the lack of elephantine storage in the room. In its announcement Redmond cheerfully points to all the new toys incoming over August, with Android users being singled out for particular love. …
Lots more data ...date of birth, contact information, criminal conviction information, ethnicity, medical information, religion, login information, signature, tax information, insurance information, informal reference, national insurance number, passport information, social security number, visa/travel information, CV / resume, driver’s license/vehicle identification information, seafarer information, bank account information, payment card information, financial information, address information and/or information concerning minors...
OK, so having plenty of storage is nice but it's a big potential security hole too - it would be interesting to see just how many of these "easy to create" free accounts are being abused to sling information around.
if they just got the blasted thing to work.
Our community group uses OneDrive - very handy for sharing files.
Our main laptop (Win 7) now can't handle it - the sync system disappears. Try reinstalling it and it says there's a newer version already there, please remove it first. Uninstall fails. Microsoft advice? Uninstall and reinstall!
What the article doesn't mention is that for £6.66 a month you can get the Office Family plan. That's up to 4tb of storage across 4 users (1tb each), plus 5x4 installs of office 365 and desktop versions including Outlook across Android, iOS, Macos and Windows.
Personally it's almost enough to make me like MS!
correct, except that I get 5 users, which I use so I know it is 5.
It is a pretty good deal really, 1TB for each of those 5, plus 60mins/months of calls to foreign numbers on Skype, including mobiles, which can matter in a pinch.
And an always-up-to-date, legal Office suite on multiple platforms for each person.
Honestly, a no-brainer.
"correct, except that I get 5 users, which I use so I know it is 5."
Yep - this is correct. I do the same. I do even better as I share it with my Dad and his other half and they pay half the subscription - so I get 3 installations including 3TB of one drive for £4 a month. Just can't argue with that value.
I even have onedrive syncing those three accounts and data to my NAS so that I have a backup independent to MS and off of the internet.
1. I do not trust Microsoft
2. I do not want to store all my information in the clound (and have to pay for it)
3. I do not want to be tied to a regular subscription for office/cloud storage
4. I do not trust Microsoft
As far as cloud storage is concerned I do not want to be beholden to any company for storing my data. After all they could decide to Stop providing it, increase the price or reduce what you get for the price or change the terms and conditions at a moments notice.
Personally once i installed office i have no intention of upgrading it unless I am forced to as it is no longer supported on the current Microsoft platform. (thanks Microsoft)
Asside from Outlook, which seems to be the only decent e-mail app. (I hate Web e-mail interfaces)
Word/Excel I rarely use the rest of office at home.
I think i would prefer to switch to open office rather than spend a load of money on a new (usless) version of office. After all I probably currently only use about 5% of the word or Excel features!
What the article doesn't mention is that for £6.66 a month you can get the Office Family plan.
Well, my son is at Uni, I am doing a Masters, my wife works in a school and my daughter attends school.
So we all get O365 thrust at us without choice or cost.
Yet I still don't use it. I have one offline copy of Word which I open and save my documents in just the once to make sure that the formatting is going to be OK at the publisher.
1. I do not trust Microsoft [...]
Well don't use their software then, there's plenty of choice.
Libre/Open Office both work great. Thunderbird is a fine email client. Linux and OSX both work. There's plenty of other cloud storage providers if you need that (although you might have to pay a subscription, that's how renting something works).
Why would you continue using Windows if you dislike everything about it?
All correct, and this is what I do. Compared to the services and apps I use, Microsoft's Office is overpriced and, frankly, too bad in usage to be acceptable.
The problem is that it is often UNAVOIDABLE. If you are a publishing author, you're required to submit and communicate the details of your manuscript with a Word-file, which means you have to keep at least Word (as the alternatives are not bug-identical, hence you cannot rely on them to accurately predict what will happen if you sent your file over!).
If you are in a business (as a publishing author), you're expected to be available on Skype. And so forth.
I. do. not. want. to. use. Microsoft. products. They're crappy to use, expensive, and data-mine as much as free services like google – despite having to pay. If you pay for the business google plans, they reduce data-mining. Microsoft does, too – on the business plans (or so they say. Don't really trust their assertions...). On the family plans, you still pay, and get data-mined (so they say, and I believe them)! I'm better off, financially, using the free plans from others than using Microsoft's private plans. I get data-mined both ways, but I don't have to pay on top.
But I must. Which means I have to get a Microsoft business plan. For stuff I actually don't want or need. For stuff for which MUCH better alternatives are out there. Because the powers-that-be have been brow-beaten to accept that Microsoft is THE STANDARD.
Sigh.
And, actually, I'm kicked thrice, because I'm a Mac-user, which means I'm not getting the full Office complement of Windows (there's no Publisher or Access – not that I wanted them – and they're even more buggy).
And since I'm in Germany, I would need the GERMAN Business Office Plan – even more expensive (€11 per month for installable apps), even less functions, but keeps the data-mining demon at bay – besides, I'm practically required to get it since I have to handle and keep safe not only MY data, but also of MY customers.
Again, this is pure empty money. It does not help me in any way, shape or form to fulfill my job. There are better ways.
Only because Microsoft kicks from above.
The problem is that it is often UNAVOIDABLE. If you are a publishing author, you're required to submit and communicate the details of your manuscript with a Word-file, which means you have to keep at least Word (as the alternatives are not bug-identical, hence you cannot rely on them to accurately predict what will happen if you sent your file over!).
Yes, this exactly. And (at least with my publishers) it has be be save in Word 97-2003 format too.
WTF?
At least with the olden .doc (Word 97-2003) format, you can use any old Word installation, and increasingly alternative like LibreOffice, as the file format is unlikely to undergo significant changes.
And to go back to the "1TB vs. 2TB" problem: I barely scratch the 5GB [sic] of the free Apple iCloud service with the stuff I need to put on the cloud.
I have implemented OneDrive for Business as part of 365 three times and I have seen some pretty big changes.
Being able to go up to 5TB is nice and working with researchers, they have big requirements for storage. But in reality, most of the larger data entities live on the file server, because who wants to upload/download images that are measured in hundreds of gigabytes?
So as soon we told everyone to not put their images up there, the top users of OneDrive storage were nowhere near 500GB.
So I wound up using the 5TB quota for change management (it works and you get all the space).
There's even a somewhat working Linux sync client for OneDrive (for Business) now. It's a slight faff to set up (systemd only) but it does sync ok.
Office365 Home is £80/year headline price, often discounted to below £50/year, for which you get 5 accounts each with 1TB of OneDrive, and full Office licences for five users on a bunch of devices each. Cracking value for money.
For the best discounts, wait for Amazon Prime Day, buy a licence, and add it to your existing subscription. It's fully cumulative, mine currently expires in 2021.
(Can we have a "To a point, Lord Copper..." icon, please?)
GJC
Does Office365 include Publisher?
Someone asked me recently and, as I dont use it, I didn't know. I am not quite clear what the website means when it says "Publisher and Access are available on PC only."
Does that mean that the cloudy version of these only works on the PC or whether you have to install those on the computer in the time honoured manner?
Yes, Publisher is included, I think (I don't use it myself, but it's listed in all the subscription plans).
"PC Only" just means it's only available as a locally installed application under Windows, not as a web service or mobile device App, all of which platforms are covered by the core application like Word and Excel.
GJC