In late February, Microsoft launched new business versions of Office 365, its subscription based software service with heavy ties into cloud servers. Even Microsoft's new Office 2013 stand alone software has cloud features, such as saving documents to SkyDrive and the use of the free Office Web Apps.
Yet, even though Microsoft is trying its best to convince its Office customers to use cloud features, there are still some people who are going to stick with the standard offline features of Office. PCWorld.com reports that these people are mainly "power users" of Office; in other worlds, the customers that routinely use more than the fraction of features that most other Office owners don't bother accessing.
Many of these Office owners enjoy the fact that Microsoft Excel can use of macros to automate tasks, which can work slower when used on a web-based application. There are also compatibility issues that crop up between documents created for offline use when viewed in web-based applications. Then there's the issue of security in terms of uploading documents and files to a cloud server instead of storing them offline. Finally, there's the risk of cloud server downtime, something that has happened on more than one occasion.
So even though Microsoft and other companies may want to move customers to the cloud, people like Tim Lynch of PC maker PsychsoftPC plan to stick with old fashioned PC software products. Lynch says:
I prefer a traditional software package because it's not subject to Internet speed or availability, it's as fast as my PC can make it, big corporations like Google can't see what I'm writing or use it for advertising or sell my info to other advertisers, and my stuff is stored on my PC under my control, not in some unnamed server in some ambiguous cloud in some unnamed country.
Source: PCWorld.com | Girl pouting image via Shutterstock
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