New From Microsoft

There have been several announcements from Microsoft in the past week or two that are worth noticing.

First, SP1 for Office 2010 has been released.  According to the sources I rely on for this sort of thing – Windows Secrets and Woody’s Office Watch – the patch has not been adequately tested and you should hold off on installing it, since Microsoft’s track record on this sort of thing is not very good.  So I repeat: hold off on SP1 until other people have installed it (read: beta tested it).

The other announcement has gotten a lot more publicity: Office 365. This is advertised as Microsoft’s foray into the “cloud.”  However, closer examination reveals that you are most likely to still require Office 2010 on your desktop. Even worse, Office 365 requires the notoriously insecure ActiveX protocol, as well as Silverlight.

In short, it is a Microsoft product through and through.  Furthermore, it is based on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud hosting platform.  Azure has only been available for a couple of years so it is not really a mature product.  Furthermore, it’s main architect, Ray Ozzie, left Microsoft last fall.  So the companies that are rushing to jump on the Azure bandwagon may well be in for a rough ride.

Comments

[Anthony J Licate]

In your post, you discuss Office 365. You mention that “Closer examination reveals that you are most likely to still require Office 2010 on your desktop”. What did you mean with this statement? Office 365 requires a minimal level of Office 2007 if you would like to have the full client experience (not Office 2010 as you have posted). Additionally, this is not to say you need Office to work with Office 365. This is because depending on the Office 365 package that is selected by the user, there are web based versions of Office that are in Office 365 (ie: Office Web Apps) that can be fully utilized via the Internet browser, although not as feature-rich as the full desktop software.

[Gregory Schieffer]

Great information. I'm a newbie and need all of the help I can get. Thank you.