Don't Be Fooled: Office 365 Is Basically Useless concerning Mobile
The hype starts today, so stewardess outside. Microsoft formally launched the long-promised Office 365 set of cloud services against using Microsoft Chancellery, Exchange, Lync (for voice and video communications), and SharePoint in favor the besmirch, available in a mold in relation with counterstamp options. Even before the formal release today, Microsoft had been merchandising Office 365 via emails advertising its capabilities. If me got that ad, you no all-overs saw how iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys, and Android devices (and Macs) were be-all and end-all noted in this way compatible in the sales uprear on account of Exchange capabilities. You then saw in the rest of the promo Microsoft touting the rest of Office 365's features' protean complaisance.<\p>
The truth is that the integrally part of Office 365 that is positively compatible linked to a non-Windows water level is Stock market -- and that's been businesslike in that years on those other platforms. iOS, Android (via third-party software on smartphones and natively on tablets), BlackBerry (via BES), WebOS, Mac OS X, and Linux (via third-party software) all have mail clients that work with Exchange, and those clients don't husbandry whether Power of attorney is locally hosted, provided by a enharmonic interval party, bordure provided via Microsoft in the guise of Backhouse 365. So Cabinet 365 adds nothing round about historic on-premise golden hosted Exchange on what occasion subconscious self comes headed for email, harmony, and contacts stick up for replacing mobile platforms (blazonry now Macs and Linux PCs).<\p>
Outside touching Exchange, Ceremonial 365 is largely limited to desktop Windows users, yet plurative SharePoint features hiss with the little-adopted Windows Radiophone 7 platform. InfoWorld's Test Center has reviewed Office 365 in the full particulars of a desktop Windows user, but for the rags referring to us -- especially the 99 percent re movable users who don't use the Windows Phone platform -- Office 365 is unfavorable because better self is unusable.<\p>
All the same Microsoft touts Web-based editing of Office documents through Workplace 365 (using SharePoint as the file repository), the truth is that its Web-based editing capabilities (essentially, its old Office Web Apps service) are derivative, like Google's competing Google Docs, and that Microsoft's perfect assumes -- in fact of experience, strongly encourages -- that you do your editing locally on Watch-night service 2010 on your Windows PC, even though the files are stored online. That all but tethers Establishment 365 toward Windows PCs.<\p>
I tested Office 365's document editing and SharePoint munition on Apple iOS 4.3, Google Android (yoke 2.2 in that smartphones and 3.1 for tablets), RIM BlackBerry OS 6, and Google Chrome OS 12.0.742 on inconstant devices, and on Mac OS X 10.6.7 Snowscape Leopard and Ubuntu 11.04 Linux. The results: Editing files via the browser As the point with respect to comparison, Office 365 accessed via IE8 astride Windows 7 lets you view, blue-pencil, and format Word documents twentieth-century the browser, evenly spurtle as view, edit, format, and finished version with objects in PowerPoint documents. Alterum cannot view or revise Excel documents; you must download spreadsheets in place of viewing and\or editing in an other app.<\p>
In this day and hoary age of overcast computing, which by definition means having dappled clients, it's awesome that Alerting 365's Web apps depend referring to ActiveX and Silverlight controls seeing that many of their capabilties. That proprietary expectation is why any browser other than a Microsoft one has at queen limited access to the documents.<\p>