There was Open Office, then there was Google docs, now Microsoft has joined the party with Office Web Apps. Better late than never, right?

Office Web Apps is Microsoft’s nod of the head to the world that is pinched for pennies both in business and in homes and schools. However you’d think that they would make sure that they had something to compete with? No..not really. Their Web Apps set has a few good sides, like the Office Ribbon, it’s very similar so those user who are familiar with the regular office ribbon will not be lost.

Also, it handles a lot like the full Office package, especially in Excel and PowerPoint. Unfortunately, their version of word seems to have a tendency to corrupt the text files to a point where they are unrecoverable and when you load files from your computer it lags so much that you could go and make a peanut-butter sandwich while waiting.

For those who are all about Microsoft products, you will probably find uses for this. It does give you access to 25 Gigs of space on their SkyDrive, their cloud based storage solution. Of course though it will require you to get a Hotmail or live account. For those of us who stayed as far away from that as possible, will not be able to use these solutions without getting one.

Also you will need to make sure that you remember to save your documents and other projects regularly…Office Web Apps does not have an auto-save feature. I have no idea how on earth they seem to think that this is a good thing, but there it is. They do very nicely warn you before navigating away from their site that “your work will not be saved, would you like to save it now? “ However, I feel that is really lacking in usefulness.

Generally speaking, I am sure that Office Web Apps will be great for those who absolutely love Microsoft’s products or who are uncomfortable leaving their software. However, for those of us who explore…there are better options.

Check out more info at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 at 10:49 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.