Microsoft Office Web Apps: Why to use and Why not

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Microsoft’s going the Google way to offer its widely used and highly-priced Office Suite Online for free. The Redmond company offers free online office components that comprises Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote as a part of free online suite called Office Web Apps. That said, the online edition of the Microsoft Office is an substantial development for consumers in the current round of updates. Overtly, it projects Microsoft’s commitment to cloud computing - - promoting applications online instead of desktop programs. On a broader perspective it seems the software giant is all set to take on the rivals such as Google and Zoho offering online office suites. With a week’s time for the release of new version of traditional desktop Microsoft Office version - Office 2010, we decided on an extensive comparison with online version.  Before you set out to purchase the desktop version, you need to see whether the online version of Office Suite has enough to do with.

In order to use the free Office Web Suite you need to visit the office.live.com. To work on the new online Office you will need a free account for the company’s broader Windows Live onilne service.

The Office Web Apps run smoothly on all major browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. As is expected, the online version of Office suite lacks some of the local desktop version of Office. Microsoft is trying to ensure that the profitability of its Desktop suite is not compromised. Then, why did Microsoft launch the online Office Web Apps? The software major is draws a line between the two versions — referring the Office Web Apps as a companion to desktop Office for “light” work.

Let’s take a look at the major pros and cons of using the Office Web Apps over Office 2010

Pros

User Interface

Online version of the Office suite wears a simpler look and feel than its desktop counterpart. It includes the Ribbon feature.

Storage

The new Web Apps boasts of a 25 gigabytes of free online storage for the documents, via a companion Microsoft online storage system called SkyDrive. The Office Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop programs. The desktop program gets fully accurate when it is opened in desktop Office. This is clearly fidelity. In the tests the claim is held true, at least on my Windows PC.

Features

• The new version of desktop Office suite has several new features, but most of them are devoted to power users or corporate users. It isn’t a big change as the predecessors.
• Two web apps, Excel and OneNote allow multiple users to log on work on the same document togather.  The Excel online is a reduced version of the
• The Office Web App use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos and create tables.
• It allows you to view documents but not edit them on your iPhone or iPad. It also works with other mobile devices.

Cons

• The Web Apps only directly open documents from and save them to your online SkyDrive storage, not hard disk. You need to upload files from your hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in Web Apps. Like most of the cloud-based programs they can only be used when you are online.
• The online version lacks a number of features in the desktop Office version. For instance you might drag photos by the corner to resize them, embed videos add new spreadsheet charts and create slide transitions or add new spreadsheet.

Clearly the Office Web Apps offers a remarkable platform for Microsoft to bring its productivity expertise to the Web. With the online version Microsoft could gather what a section of consumers need for creating simple documents.