The Official Freesourcing.org Blog

With the growing popularity of Google Docs and Openoffice.org as free alternatives to the Office Suite, Microsoft has finally responded with it’s own Office Web Apps on Skydrive, launched this past Monday. This release comes one week before Microsoft Office 2010 is launched on the market for consumers (it’s been on sales for businesses for about 2 months). Office Web Apps includes versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, & OneNote. Let’s take a look at how Office Web apps shapes up against its competition:

The web layouts for Word, Excel, & PowerPoint are basically a trimmed down version of the corresponding desktop program. They don’t have quite as many features as the Google Docs applications, but enough to allow users to make basic edits and create basic documents. One of its main selling points is that your uploaded files will look exactly the same online as it would on your computer since it is essentially the same program. This will help reign in consumers who, like me, just couldn’t get into Google Docs (I guess I can say Office Web Apps was MY idea!) since it looks and works exactly like the desktop version.

For all you early adopters, if you plan on upgrading to MS Office 2010 next week, you will be able to upload your files to Skydrive with the click of a button. The release of Office 2010 is probably one of the reasons for the trimmed down features. Microsoft doesn’t want, as Google Enterprise president, Dave Girouard recently suggested, people to stop buying and upgrading their Office suites. Office Web Apps is being marketing this as an extension to its popular (and profitable) desktop software.

Office Web Apps also has an online version of its OneNote software. For those who have not used it, it is a virtual notebook you can use anywhere from in the classroom to business meetings. As a student, OneNote has been invaluable for all my daily needs from creating to-do lists to doodling around my notes while the professor lectures. It integrates audio, video, text, pen, & more all into one space.

Unfortunately, the web-based version of OneNote is so lacking in almost every aspect, they may as well have not even included it. This is disappointing because Office Web Apps is also missing the Drawing and Forms tools that Google Docs has. OneNote could have been a great differentiator and a way to excel in an area that Google has not touched on yet. Instead, it is just a glorified version of Word with some cool little icons.

All in all, Microsoft Office Web Apps has made a strong entrance into the Office Suite cloud. While it is behind Google Docs and will need to work a little harder to get users interested, it is a great first start.