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Comment by hp50g | Hacker News Reader

You should try Microsoft support. Straight through to a human who knows what they are talking about without waiting EVERY TIME.

Not only that, Office even works ENTIRELY offline.

And it opens all our documents absolutely perfectly EVERY TINE.

Yes this is facetious: Google have forced peoples standards down.

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I'm probably the least fan of Microsoft in the world, but I have to agree with you on that. More generally, cloud products are extremely convenient on the surface, but beneath the water there is an iceberg of trouble.

Especially when you don't have your own backups of the data, as usual with these kind of services. Outages, unexplained data loss, services being shut down, users being locked out for unrelated reasons (oh you didn't put your real name in G+?), unexpected changes to the interface and software, the list goes on.

The vendor lock-in is even worse than when using closed-source software with DRM. At least you can keep running those (if necessary in an emulator) when discontinued, or reverse engineer them...

More generally, cloud products are extremely convenient on the surface, but beneath the water there is an iceberg of trouble.

Or cloud services are great, until it rains ;)

You left out the bit where Google invested massively in one of the few credible alternatives to Office, and forced Microsoft to reengineer their products to enable online collaboration. So, it's a step or two backwards on support and a leap forward on functionality and access (You can get fully functional Google Docs for free, just not on your own domain, Office 365 seems to be £80/year).

You can also get free Microsoft Office apps in SkyDive, which are actually better than Google Docs (and don't screw up your documents). These apps don't need an Office 365 sub.

Despite the name, Office 365 isn't really about Office -- you already have it -- it's selling web-based SharePoint and other services.

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