Google Apps upgrade threatens Microsoft Office
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Google introduced a Google Apps version that offers guaranteed uptime, IT management tools, increased e-mail storage and integration with Docs & Spreadsheets.
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(InfoWorld) - A Microsoft employee on Thursday accidentally blogged about an upgrade to Office Mobile that shouldn't be available for another couple of weeks. The upgrade, when it becomes available, should solve an incompatibility issue that left Windows Mobile 6.0 users unable to read Office 2007 file formats. Jason Langridge, who works in Microsoft's Windows Mobile group in the U.K., wrote that Office Mobile 6.1 was available and he included a link to the download page. But a representative with Microsoft's external public relations firm said that the upgrade was put up on the site initially for internal testing and was accidentally made available to the public. The new version of Office Mobile is expected to become available very soon, probably within the next two weeks, he said. Langridge has not yet removed the post from his blog. The download page, which is no longer accessible, said that the upgrade allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel Workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slides that were created using Office 2007.Â Office 2007 was released in JanuaryÂ and is based on the Open XML format.Â Windows Mobile 6.0Â devices began hitting the market in the middle of this year but users have been unable to read Office 2007 documents, unless they used a third party software product. DataViz, for example, offers software that lets Windows Mobile 6.0 users read Office 2007 documents. Users of the upgrade will also be able to view and extract files from compressed .zip folders, it said. Following the link on Langridge's site now leads to a page with this message: "The download you requested is unavailable. If you continue to see this message when trying to access this download, go to the "Search for a Download" area on the Download Center home page."
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It's just 10 months old, but Google Apps may be in for a life lesson in 2008. If so, it's likely to involve the dangers of running with big dogs such as Microsoft Office when one is just a pup ... and a pup destined to grow into more of a chihuahua-type hound, at that.
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Although it has repeatedly denied it has any intention of taking on Microsoft Office, Google on Thursday introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a fee-based version of its free Web-based word processing and spreadsheet applications for businesses.
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The delivery of the presentations application will no doubt once again turn up the heat on industry discussions that Google Docs and Google Apps rival Microsoft's Office suite of productivity applications and the Outlook/Exchange messaging platform.
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Google Apps Premier Edition hosted office productivity suite could be one of the cheapest mistakes a large business makes.
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British schools should not upgrade to Microsoft&#39;s Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) said in a report on the software. It&#160;also supported use of the international standard ODF&#160;(Open Document Format) for storing files.Schools might consider using Vista if rolling out all-new infrastructure, but should not introduce it piecemeal alongside other versions of Windows, or upgrade older machines, said the agency, which is responsible for advising British schools and colleges on their IT use.&quot;We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit,&quot; it said.The cost of upgrading Britain&#39;s schools to Vista would be &#163;175 million ($350 million), around a third of which would go to Microsoft, the agency said. The rest would go on deployment costs, testing and hardware upgrades, it said.Even that sum would not be enough to purchase graphics cards capable of displaying Windows Aero Graphics, although that&#39;s no great loss because &quot;there was no significant benefit to schools and colleges in running Aero,&quot; it said.As for Office 2007, &quot;there remains no compelling case for deployment,&quot; the agency said in its full report, published this week.The agency was equally skeptical about the benefits of Vista and Office 2007 last January, when it published an interim report based on its evaluation of beta versions of the new software. Then, it advised that the added value of Vista&#39;s new features was not sufficient to justify the cost of deployment, while Office 2007 contained no &quot;must-have&quot; features.In this year&#39;s report, BECTA warned schools that do choose to use Office 2007 to avoid Microsoft&#39;s OOXML (Office Open XML) document format because of concerns about compatibility between different applications -- even though interoperability is one of the benefits Microsoft claims for the format.It called on schools to make teachers, parents and pupils more aware of free alternatives to Microsoft&#39;s products, and asked the IT industry to facilitate their use.The agency also recommended setting up desktops to make it easy to use such open-source applications, and advised schools to insist their suppliers deliver office productivity software that can open and save ODF documents, setting it as the default file format.However, it slammed Microsoft for dragging its feet with incorporating support for ODF in Office 2007.&quot;While the product includes the functionality to read virtually every other relevant file format &#39;out of the box&#39;, the processes for dealing with ODF files are very cumbersome,&quot; BECTA wrote.In addition, it said, ODF file converters provided by Microsoft are not intuitive because they behave differently from the regular file save dialogs.&quot;We believe that these arrangements present sufficient technical difficulties for the majority of users to make them disinclined to use competitor products and this may weaken competition,&quot; the agency said.
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InfoWorld - Following Google's announcement on Thursday that it would offer an enhanced version of its Google Apps, dubbed Google Apps Premier Edition, the company left no doubt about the direction in which it was heading.
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The notion that cheap or free Web-based word processing or spreadsheet programs could replace traditional software like Microsoft Office (MSFT) is becoming more realistic all the time. Outfits like Google (GOOG), ThinkFree, and Zoho have new and better services every day.
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Not great software, but certainly good enough Comment Google is now head-to-head with Microsoft in the Office Apps market, as you may have guessed from the recent Google Apps announcement. What you get from Google is word processing, spreadsheet, calendar, chat, web page creation, and email.â¦
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Nothing elicits fear and loathing across the land like the announcement of a major Windows upgrade. Grown men and women quake at the thought of hours of troubleshooting. Corporate IT departments don full battle gear and issue stern warnings against upgrading before they've tested for incompatibilities. Small children weep when their favorite computer games suddenly won't run.
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There&#8217;s now one more reason to be careful about opening Microsoft Office attachments.
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Microsoft has offered yet another way for businesses to block the Automatic Update of Windows XP to the big-deal SP2 upgrade. The developer posted a copy-and-paste script to
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Plus: More Office holes, and a major Adobe problem that affects all browsers.
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Microsoft Corp.  on  Thursday failed to quash fears that a new version of its  Windows software system would be further delayed, stirring  concerns that a new technology cycle tied to the upgrade could  be put on hold.
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(InfoWorld) - For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond's mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade. Mobile 6 comes with mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With the continuing increase in sales of smartphones at the expense of handheld devices, Office makes a lot of sense, especially for synchronizing with desktop files, according to Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group. Carriers and handset manufacturers who believe they can put the limited memory and storage to better use, however, are out of luck. Microsoft Office still comes with Mobile 6. According to John Starkwether, a product manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, Office is part of the package. Starkwether conjectured that if a vendor really wants to exclude Office from the operating system, an accommodation might be possible. Additional upgrades to the mobile OS include Microsoft's Direct Push Technology with automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks, and contacts using Exchange Server. For security and management, Mobile 6 will also give mobile network managers the capability of remotely wiping out all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Other security features include certificate options and storage card encryption. Business users will also be pleased with the inclusion of mobile versions of the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Server in order to access a company's standard line of business applications remotely. The Office applications are the most robust to date for the limited capacities of a cell phone. Spell checking in Word, though, is not included. E-mail viewing will be easier on the eye with formatting, tables, and pictures viewable as originally generated. One-click options for e-mail, such as "reply all", moving a message to a subfolder and "delete" have been added to accommodate the restricted functionality of a small device. Windows Vista users on the desktop will be able to swap music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between the Vista PC and the mobile device. Windows Live will integrate mail, messenger, search, contacts, and spaces. Call history is now placed inside the individual contact card. Enderle said that although there was "a lot of great stuff" in Mobile 6 Microsoft still has to focus on ease of use. "Compared to the Apple iPhone with its simplified interface, Mobile 6 is still complex to use," Enderle said. Devices with Windows Mobile 6 will ship worldwide in the second quarter.
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Latest service pack for productivity suite renders older file formats--including those for Word, Excel, PowerPoint--inaccessible.