The complete guide to Microsoft Office 2010 | Hacker News Reader

The complete guide to Microsoft Office 2010

techcrunch.com

What does "anyway" mean?

Seriously. Can the editors please fix this headline?

What's up with the headline? Did anyone seriously expect Microsoft not to come with an updated version of Office just because Google has some (currently) vague plans about a Netbook OS?

I think some people overestimate people's general willingness to run crucial applications in a browser.

Seriously people, You can disagree with me if you'd like, but Office has been solid software that has become the industry standard. It's done an admirable job in recent years.

I'm not sure who would disagree with this. Love it or hate it, Office is a behemoth.

I think people are expecting so much more then what I think Google will in fact produce. I may be wrong, but I just expect Google Os to be something to be used in a pc with small hard drive, some good networking capabilities small disk and no graphics card with the os booting up in 10 seconds and with an UI with some giant buttons pointing you to the web and to the apps of google. In the meantime Google will certainly figure out some inovations like the way to store files which will certainly have a web based option, but nothing that will compete on the same market as the regular OS. It will be the return of terminals (but under the hat of cloud computing).

And if I'm right there will be a huge wave of disapointment.

I think you overestimate how much people actually understand/care about how computers works.

Did you see googles video asking people what a browser is? if you provide an office like interface in a browser and it works and is stable, then people will use it, and probably be completely oblivious to the fact anythings changed.

Until they try to drag'n'drop, or include excel sheets, or use a reference manager, or define that page numbering should start 1.5cm from the right side and start numbering on the third page as if it was the first, or add a "printed date" to the frontpage. Or text in small caps or an end note, or any mildly complex reference or any mildly complex formatting.

I specifically chose those actions that a non-tech user near me had to perform int the past two days. These are normal tasks that normal users have to perform.

Did this user have to do these things to produce a document for dead tree consumption? I don't doubt that these features are necessary for producing something pretty on the printed page, but that use case is becoming less and less common.

Right now, I'm consulting for a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm's IT group. They're pretty old-school in a lot of respects, but the only printed Word document I've been given since starting here has been the telephone manual! People carry their laptops to meetings and read stuff electronically. Some people still print out stuff, but it's not all that common. The print-friendly Word features are becoming more like Pagemaker features -- really useful, but not necessary for 95%+ of employees.

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