Sunday, June 13, 2010

Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live

Microsoft's Web-based Office goes live (Beyond Binary - CNET News)

So MS Office Live is live. Another cloud-based service for document creation. Great things about it:
  1. it's Microsoft, so those of my students who totally refuse to consider anything not from Redmond can finally get into the collaborative writing assignments I want them to do
  2. It comes with 25GB of storage! That is massive. And cool.
  3. It works like a stripped down Office application, so most people should know how to use it. (Given that 99% of the world uses Office... :( )
  4. It connects with the off-line MS Office you spent all that money on, so you can use both seamlessly.
  5. It's free. Did I not mention that earlier? Oops... yes, it's free, so many students can use it once they are connected. You don't NEED the expensive desktop applications to use it. It stands on its own, kind of like... Google Docs!
  6. It works with all browsers, even Chrome! That's cool.
Bad things about it:
  1. It's MS proprietary.
So I hope that more online applications will get more students to use the systems to share and collaborate. Now there's almost an application for anyone and any style.