“Microsoft Office killer”
I’m sure you have read or heard this somewhere before.
Even if you have not, don’t worry: it is pure BS.
At this time.
But, I seem to be putting the cart before the horse, so let me start at the beginning.
Yesterday, I was asked by one of my nieces to help edit a paper she had prepared.
I agrees, and asked her to send me the document.
She sent me a link to a Google Docs document.
The insanity I have been seeing, and one that I strenuously object, and loudly complained about, is the use of Google Chromebooks by educational institutions.
People, it is BULLSHIT!
Your kids’ schools have sold, and/or are selling whatever little privacy your kids have left to Google for a low-low fee of cheap.
The cheap here refers to the initial capex of obtaining the devices. Little do these institutions know that whatever meager monetary gains they enjoy are almost instantly obliterated by the significantly higher opex that is required by Chromebooks.
“Kiddo”, I tell her, “I don’t do anything Google. So send me the document in [Microsoft Office] Word format.”
Sadly, the middle-schooler did not know how, since she only uses true, Windows-based PCs at home.
So she sent me a PDF.
Since the document was due within an hour, I decided to suspend my moratorium on Google products, and help her. Because family.
The UI
Wow, this is the Google Docs user interface?
All the while since some folks have been touting their use of it, I was under the impression – thoroughly mistaken, as I found out – that it would be easy, and intuitive to use.
It most certainly is NOT!
Wow!
B-a-s-i-c.
Everything is basic: editing controls; the control afforded users by those edits; the UI; everything!
Wow. It was like if I had blipped into 1987, and was forced into using Aldus PageMaker v1.0!
This is the crap that schools have sold out their student’s privacy to Google for?
I am almost incentivized to revisit this issue with one of my kid’s schools.
At least, schools, by the very dint of their being, need money, and try to be cheap.
However, businesses that go Google Docs because of the seemingly zero capex, are insane.
All your information is exposed to Google.
All of it.
I haven’t even delved into compatibility issues with the gold standard, Microsoft Office!
Ask yourself: how cheap should you be.
Then go get Microsoft Office 365.
Completely worth it!
© 2002 – 2016, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
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