R.I.P. Microsoft Office.

Another emphatic vote NO for the cloud.

The one insanely great feature of it: Being able to use your personal software and files from any computer at any time. This is like the dream from which the cloud utopia spings.

The insanely bad feature of it: As everyone else but the cloud pushers have noticed. Requiring a constant, highspeed internet connection to do ANYTHING is just not going to fly. It /may/ work in an internal private cloud network, but not for roaming or home users.

I'll have to say, the day that MS Office goes cloud-only is the day Open Office will take over the world.

Just a few questions from me:
- anyone here do internet banking? Or even online shopping? Are you worried about security?
- when was the last time you couldn't get an internet connection and how long did that last?
- when was the last time your preferred mail server went down?

So what's the big deal? Security? Connectivity? Reliability? I'm sure they're all covered.

I don't expect many consumers will be using the cloud but for businesses it would make perfect sense.

Ruudfood said:

Just a few questions from me:
- anyone here do internet banking? Or even online shopping? Are you worried about security?

Do both regularly, and never worried about either much. Opera has the best security available, from encryption to private tabs.

- when was the last time you couldn't get an internet connection and how long did that last?

It would seem to me, that if a person wasn't able to get online, they wouldn't be able to access the Cloud either.

- when was the last time your preferred mail server went down?

In the 3 years that I have been using it, I think that it went down once, and that was only for a couple of hours. If I had anything that was especially urgent, I have another account that I could use.

I simply do not see the need or practicality for the Cloud.

Ruudfood said:

Just a few questions from me:
- anyone here do internet banking? Or even online shopping? Are you worried about security?
- when was the last time you couldn't get an internet connection and how long did that last?
- when was the last time your preferred mail server went down?

So what's the big deal? Security? Connectivity? Reliability? I'm sure they're all covered.

I don't expect many consumers will be using the cloud but for businesses it would make perfect sense.

Yep, do both online banking and shopping - good adherence to security issues so am not worried but keep my wits about me
Internet outage has sometimes lasted up to 3/4 hrs but it's a rare occurrence.
I use webmail - Yahoo so see above

HTH.

No cloud apps for me I think...

If I need to access a document from anywhere on the planet I'll just access my Live Mesh/SkyDrive/Google Docs, etc. online folders (through WiFi - 3/4G broadband - LAN) and open the file with whatever version of Office is on my notebook.

If I can't get there using the above technologies, I'm probably in a place where I don't need or want to look at the docs anyway

Hell my place of work just "upgraded" to Office 2007. You say "cloud" they look in the sky. Businesses adopting cloud technology is a long way off.