A couple of days ago i was having a very constructive and extremely enlightening conversation with @mikeherrity.  I had asked him if i could use some of his tweets in this blog as i was hoping to post it soon after our conversation but let’s just say other matters got in the way!

The thread of our conversation started off about the features available in Microsoft Office 2010′s file menu.  I saw the screenshot which @mikeherrity had posted with his tweet and my first thought was the file menu as it stands in the beta is essentially overkill.  Thinking about it further now I think having dedicated buttons for save as options such as ‘Save as xps’ is quite simply a waste of space in an interface and certainly unnecessary and offputting to certain users.

Which users am I talking about?  The majority of staff and certainly most of the students in a school who would never use not just those features but the vast majority of features contained within products like Microsoft Office.  Don’t get me wrong – despite the ridiculous ribbon Microsoft Office 2007 is a very powerful office suite for those who know how to use it properly!

This does make me wonder about the cost to institutions of paying for software which doesn’t even come close to having its full value used.  I realise this is an old argument but coming up to the release of Microsoft Office 2010 at some point this year I think it is one well worth revisiting.  In my conversation with @mikeherrity we touched on Google Docs briefly as an option.  Although the technology behind Google Docs is possible just not ready for adoption school wide it is on the cusp of being ready.  As a free option it is compelling especially as it has a much more stripped down feature set.  This means for standard users who need it to create a quick document it has the ability to do so and they do not need to wade through multiple other features in order to find what they need.

Google has its issues though – I’ve personally found getting anything out of Google in terms of help difficult.  Their reliance on a web based front end to manage everything is tricky.  With Microsoft though if I wanted to have a chat about something like Live@Edu or Sharepoint I know I could probably have a Microsoft employee on the line within a very short space of time. Mike also pointed out that Google’s business thrives on ad generated revenue and if the advertising game changes on the Internet they might be scuppered.  I can understand his reasoning but I think for now and the foreseeable future I think Google has shown the ability to adapt pretty well.  One only has to look at how Android is starting to take effect in the mobile phone market to realise that despite a late start they can bring a fairly significant amount of expertise to an area.

Where does this leave Microsoft?  I would like to see Microsoft offer flexible licensing agreements for schools for Office 2010 whereby the majority of machines can be web app only and some machines in the school have the full version of Office available for power users.  I realise this has implications for the infrastructure of a school and its potential reliance on bandwidth but this would mean computers could be a) more lightweight in terms of specification and b) less reliant on monolithic installations of software which do very little.

Mike mentioned on premises data in discussing Sharepoint and although I understand the need for well managed on premises data I think even Microsoft

must admit that living in the cloud is going to become a big part of our school lives from now on.  I get more out of the Internet connection here at school for productivity then I do out of our Microsoft Office installation.  We have nine programs in our Office start folder – I wonder how many students have used all of them?

Till next time
Brian