Macs, Linux, or Firefox.

This is a feature, not a shortcoming.

Which is great news in many fronts. First, a major source of viruses is gone. Second, those enterprise decision makers rejecting OpenOffice for its lack of VBA no longer have reasons to continue doing so, at least if they accept Office Live in the office workspace.

But is also bad in other fronts: gone are the quick and dirty script jobs that allowed you to automate mundane tasks in all fronts from operating system management, reporting from many data sources to, ahem, spreadsheet handling.

Microsoft's Office Web Apps - a long way from here

Yeah, but a lot, lot further than you think!

at first consideration :

1 Ubiquity Can you connect to your stuff anywhere in the world

2 Functionality It's got to work properly

3 Availability It's gotta be there whenever you want it

Soooo

1 Where will it be hosted ?

2 much of it is not yet done e.g. :

This is one of the least complete Technical Previews that I have known Microsoft to release

I soon found other shortcomings ...

no printing

to mention just three of countless missing features ...

You can share a document with others and enjoy simultaneous editing, but I found this problematic in practice because there is no indication of what another person is currently editing. This means you can inadvertently overwrite another person's work

The preview uses Windows Live, though, and according to product manager Chris Adams, this partly explains why it is so rough

3 See 1! Plus support; maintenance; backup etc etc

Another case of Microsoft pre-announcing something in the expectation that business will wait.

This time, however, they've missed the boat. Lookout for M$ buying companies to provide what M$ is incapable of delivering themselves.

M$ also has the following issues to contend with :

20 per cent of companies already use Google Docs [and students too since some of their work is done in teams - sitting in your own room scoffing pizza and sharing data!]

If it's the end of June next year, they have 40 working weeks to build, test, debug and deliver a usable product.

What are their chances ?

The "irrelevant" internet turned out to be their nemesis.

Later consideration will identify other stuff too !

Can we please drop the tired, teenaged "M$" rubbish. It's about as funny as the "my dog has no nose" joke.

You should also use the Troll icon.

There are any number of shortcomings with MS Office let alone MS Office Web Apps - but please show me the perfect application suite & I'll use it.

Rather than demonstrate the closed-minded approach that you seem to be stuck with, why not have a look and see what this might do to existing web-based apps. Ponder this: Surely this is the sort of competition that you would want to see to ensure that Google Apps and so forth are pushed and challenged to make them better and better? Or would you prefer that MS slunk off somewhere and let Google turn into what you perceive MS to be today?

20% of companies use Google Docs already ..hmm.. Microsoft hosting Office Docs on Microsoft Live... hmm...

Companies will need to very quickly and very seriously deal with data security in the cloud frontier. This will also impinge upon the cloud companies who will need to be transparent around where data is stored.

If companies begin to break into the cloud then safe harbour regulations, personnel data, data privacy, and data security (who has access to what and can you guarentee that some cloud support engineer is not peeking) become real issues to manage...

I can't wait for the first law suit...

I work at a place that uses Google Docs pretty extensively for certain functions so as to allow multiple people in multiple places to access the same document simultaneously. Our internet connection is top notch, but the bottom line is that Google Docs sucks due to the huge latency. The latency is a direct consequence of it being a web app, and that issue is one that Google (or Microsoft) cannot remove. So unless you are so inept at typing and editing as to naturally be slow as molasses, you find it trivial to over run the Google Docs application you are working on, which doing so turns the document into a mess. Google Docs also is feature poor, but features can always be added.

Everyone I know who uses Google Docs extensively complains about the latency issue. Why Microsoft feels it has to follow Google down this retched road is beyond me.

... they claimed that this would work on Mac, Linux and any standards-compliant browser. So, they were just talking though their arse, then? OK, no surprises there.

BUT, a word-processor that doesn't print? Gee, that' IS only something that MS could come up with. Spent all that time making sure that it sports the stupid unloved "ribbon" thing but -duh- it can't output to anything. Genius.

Go away.

....do people come on here and comment about a technical preview bemoaning the fact that it is feature incomplete. Its a technical preview FFS.

Yes Greg, you are that FAIL.

> BUT, a word-processor that doesn't print? Gee, that' IS only something that MS could come up

> with.

It is Excel Web App that can't print in the preview. Word prints; it does so by converting to Adobe PDF. This caused me some confusion at first, because printing prompted me to download a file. The reason is that I have Acrobat browser integration turned off. I imagine that Excel will work in the same way eventually, but who knows?

Tim

Well so long as it actually work because Google's attempt is quite frankly terrible, it's slow and seriously lacking in features.

is probably "smoke and mirrors".

In this case, the mirrors are provided by the Web, and the smoke is generated by that wonderful fraternity party practice of lighting farts.

I use Google Docs extensively (for appropriate purposes, not heavy lifting) and have never had significant trouble with latency. When I'm on a slow or flaky network it switches to slow/flaky network mode, which is dependent on Gears, and reverts to local saving as appropriate. It has always worked well for me. Just wanted to give you an alternate view.

I may well, be "that FAIL" but I'd not even actually BOTHER making available an office suite demo on-line that didn't at least try to embody *basic* functionality. Notice I say *basic*. That means printing. Not a fucking ribbon.

Its rather like demoing a video adapter without a monitor. Pointless.

Paris because you seem to have as much clue as she and MS do when it comes to demoing software, complete or not.

I've not used the Web Apps preview, nor am I likely to. But what's with all the comments about a lack of printing support?

Which decade are you people living in? Printing is a last resort, as far as I'm concerned, not a core piece of functionality any more.

It's not a demo, it's a technical preview.

Just so you can understand here is the dictionary definition of preview

"anything that gives an advanced idea or impression of something to come."

You see, it's not hard is it to get things correct, instead of pointlessly slagging something off for the sake of.

You are still a FAIL.

"Why Microsoft feels it has to follow Google down this retched road is beyond me."

Because Microsoft wants to own every single road, even the shitty ones.

"but you get what you pay for"

one more for the "drooling morons" file. Seriously, people, stop using this expression. Depending on how you take it it is either *always* wrong or *always* true, so what's the point? It's just useless chatter. Well, it is useful as a "I've nothing nothing interesting to say" statement, so the other people can just say Hmm hmm and go talk to someone with a brain.

I won't answer the rest of the post obviously.