Microsoft Trashes Google Docs in New Commercials

[rodbowler]

Interesting. I have found Libre Office (4.0) is more likely to open an old office document (for example, saved in the '97 or 2003 Office versions) without loss of data or formatting than Office 2010 or 2013. It's not perfect, but neither are Microsoft's products.

 

[m32]

They're promoting Goggle Docs in my book. Me = not offended (proud Google user).

 

[DarkSable]

Well... I love google drive.
I also have my old copy of Office 2003; as far as I'm concerned, after that it just went downhill.

 

[bigdragon]

Does Microsoft honestly think this is going to cause people to switch from Google Docs to Office? These commercials seem to be targeted at your average computer user who is likely swayed by the free price of Google Docs and Libre Office. No need for an expensive Office license. IT departments in the real world are more interested in doing a cost-benefit analysis than paying attention to a funny little marketing campaign Microsoft could have used the funds for to reduce the cost of Office. Seems like a waste of money to me. Microsoft needs to get back to making great products that speak for themselves. Cheap shot ads don't work.

 

[mitch074]

Today, I have to use Office 2007 at work - corporate policy. Pretty much every time I have to edit a 40-pages document (not very complex, titles, a few images, and a summary), it crashes on save and loses all the work I did on it before. Please note that this is with all SPs and patches installed. At one time, I worked with Office 2010 - it crashed less, but it still crashed and would lose data.
I've been using all versions of Office since 97. All had the same problems:
- not portable,
- unstable as soon as you go past a dozen pages and try to give your document a structure,
- and formatting goes out the window as soon as your printer differs from one computer to another (this got better since 2007, but since the file format now changes with each subsequent version of Office, now you simply need to open the same document with 2 different versions of Office to wreck it).
Back in 2004, when I was writing my thesis, and having gotten fed up with crashes and having to recover corrupted data every couple of hours from a 30 pages document (I still had 390 pages to write), I switched to OpenOffice (version 1.1.2 at the time). Now, I'm running LibreOffice 4.0.3. What can I say?
- rock solid styles, at page, paragraph and text levels (Word doesn't support page styles); also, supports precise positioning and layout of text zones (Word doesn't support either);
- when OOo/LibO crashes (which doesn't happen half as often as Office's most stable version), it saves the document first, then exits. When recovering, more often than not the cursor goes back to where it was right before the crash... Or if it didn't it means it cleaned up the document, and you're starting from a safe point.
- Opening an OpenOffice document from 2003 on the latest LibreOffice version... Just works. It retains styles, formatting (inasmuch as you have the same fonts installed) and positioning rather well. Reverse is more often than not true (except for stuff that wasn't supported in older versions).
- Opening a .doc document will usually result in a faithful rendering of it, no matter what version of Word was used to generate it. More often than not, a .doc that makes Word crash, will open nicely in Writer, and will also save properly. Same with .xls and .ppt files.
- you can work with the same suite in Windows, OS X and Linux. The latter, in 64-bit too.
MS Office has some nice features, too - but, are they worth the price? In my case, no - and I'd wager it's the case for many people.

 

[mariusmotea]

Microsoft Trashes Google Docs in New Commercials And Users Trashes Microsoft in Comments. This must be the correct title

 

[g00fysmiley]

yea... format changes and data loss transfering m$ docs to google docs... good point, that is why i don't use m$ office at all and just use open office and google docs... no mess ups that way... pretty sure soem of the stuff i have done in open office opr google docs has messed up in others opening it in m$ office to so that is a two way street there m$

 

[Gurg]

These are the opening shots for Microsoft survival. IE is used as the browser in less than 50% of users despite Windows being the dominate operating system. Office has basically had a monopoly in the business world since Lotus 123 was killed. Android based operating systems are cheaper than MS Windows, more open and are starting to ship on more tablets and being talked about for laptops and desktops. Most of the features MS is touting in their ad probably aren't even used by most basic Office users. For my home use and light business work 2007 Office Student still works just fine.
The business world remains a big chunk of MS sales and profits. If they lose that they have lost their monopoly and ability to gouge the public.

 

[hannibal]

"MS-office has more features, but Google docks is still best tool for multiuser work." I completely disagree. I upload my files to Skydrive and anyone can view/edit them. I don't trust either of these companies all that much but I trust Microsoft with my privacy and data a lot more than I trust Google.

At the same time? Well well, that is improvement if it actually can do it. Normally x dumbers of people can open it and when one saves the document it will be owerdriven when next saves it... Didn't know that MS included multiuser editing to Office... Have been waiting it for years and years...

 

[_Cosmin_]

When they attack their competition is a very good sign of FEAR... it means that competition IS BETTER (and they try to throw dirt on it... to keep their l`users).
Anyway... you can have google docs on ANY DEVICE (ANDROID, IOS and WIN)... can you say something like that about office? Even more: office365 still has issues on win in "selected browsers"... o yeah + it`s not free!
They mock gdocs ability to open ms office files, but try the other way: can office open ANYTHING else (hint... can`t: not even pdf)?

 

[mynith]

I currently use LibreOffice, but I'd like to try Calligra when it's matured enough.

 

[williamf3000]

I switched my small business to Google Docs about 3 years ago. We use the business apps version that costs $50 per user per year (It gives you a lot of stuff for $50). Yes Google does not have the same formatting power of Office. BUT and this is a huge but, I only have to maintain a particular document in one place, but it happens to be everywhere all the time. OMG how F***ing brilliant. I cannot tell you how many hours and days I have spent over the last 20 years trying to find the most current version of Word doc or traveling somewhere that I need a document and realize that the last time I worked on the document was on my other computer. There are some minor inconvieneces with Google Docs and if you are anal about formatting it may not be for you, but if you want your stuff when you want it because you have better things to do than "file management," then try it.
It takes a little getting use to because it is based on a totally different way of doing things. If you like the idea of your entire computer system being totally integrated and not platform specific, then Google Apps is great!