Free Office?! Have Microsoft Gone Mad!?

Microsoft earns a large proportion of it's vast revenue from the licensing and purchasing of it's Office software products.  It's an extremely big market for them.  Recent reports suggest they still have over 90% of the global productivity software market worldwide.  And it has been that way for some time.  However, recent decisions indicate that Microsoft are clearly worried by the threat from other software companies such as Google and Apple, who offer their productivity suites for free (Google Apps and Apple iWork apps).

Microsoft now offer free, fully-featured downloadable copies of Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus to students across the world as long as the educational institution has a volume license for it's academic staff (which is the case in the majority of medium-large educational institutions).  Not only do they get a license to download Office on upto 5 devices, those devices can be cross-platform - including Mac OSX, IOS and Android versions.  Needless to say the majority of institutions are signing up to this offer, allowing their students access to it.  Sadly, Keele has made the decision not to, until demand from students is quantified.

And just today, Microsoft have announced that the mobile versions of their Office apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices are now available to use free of charge.  Previously a subscription to Office 365 was needed to allow editing of documents on these devices, but in another apparent change of heart, Microsoft have now withdrawn that caveat and you now just need a Microsoft account (which is free).

In a similar strange move, Microsoft also signed a partnership agreement with Dropbox to allow their cloud storage apps direct access to its Office applications.  This means you can now store and load documents using Dropbox and not just Microsoft's OneDrive.

This is great news for PC users with an iPad.  Although Apple and Google apps are great, they do not play well with the traditional PC productivity platform of Windows and Microsoft Office documents.  Editing Office document on an iPad using Apple or Google apps is often a frustrating affair despite the promise of compatibility.  Google Docs app for iPad for instance is little more than a text editor, with the options for rich formatting or even the simplest of features (e.g. a table) noticeably missing.

So have Microsoft just handed their rivals a massive productivity boost by making the iPad more useful?  Yes.  Is that bad for business?  Not necessarily, as it allows fans of their software to continue to be fans when using non-windows devices.  That helps to keep that global market share looking very healthy...

Links: 

Free Office for Mobile Devices
Free Office for Students

A Cableless Nirvana

Something that a lot of presenters find annoying is the constant need to carry cables and adapters around with them just so they can plug in to the various displays and projectors that they may end up using.

We've tried to compound this problem by providing ready to use cables pre-fitted to a lot of our lecterns, but this doesn't help in non-teaching rooms and it doesn't exactly make the lecterns look great with lots of cables dangling around waiting to be used.

And don't get me started on display port standards.  VGA, HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, MiniHDMI, MiniDV, Apple Adapters etc.  All of which could be needed by the huge variety of devices that could appear in teaching rooms.

Of course it helps when you know what devices people are likely to have - again something we are working on here - and when you do know, you can provide the right cables and adapters accordingly.

But there's a new school of thought trying hard to ditch physical cables all together.  Wireless Display technology - or WiDi (to give it its inevitable acronym) - is a new set of technologies that aim to provide external display projection without the need for cables or adapters.  It's something we are beginning to see in the consumer market with the likes of Apple TV, Chromecast and others allowing smartphones, tablets and other devices to mirror their screen wirelessly over wifi.

Intel have been working on WiDi for a few years now and have a solution built into many current chipsets which allow Intel based laptops and tablets to connect their display's wirelessly to compatible receivers plugged into screens and projectors.  The latest iteration of Intel WiDi also supports the Miracast standard - a WiDi standard used by many Android based devices - so the Intel WiDi receivers could support Android as well as Windows devices (I've tested them - they work!).  Microsoft has also added their support by incorporating the drivers and software needed for WiDI, into Windows 8.x without the need for additional software.  Whereas Windows 7 requires additional software from Intel.

Of course Apple chose to go their own way, and their proprietary wireless display technology - AirPlay - needs it's own receivers (AppleTV) and IOS and OSX devices will not play with other technologies like Miracast or WiDi (at the time of writing).

Microsoft is also getting into the WiDi market with the announcement of it's own Wireless Display Adapter due out soon.  This is obviously support the WiDi and Miracast standards and works in a similar way to Intel's WiDi compatible receivers being simply peer-peer wifi rather than needing to connect to a wifi access point (which can be an issue for Google Chromecast for example).

Intel are also about to improve the WiDi offering to businesses with the impending launch of Intel Pro WiDi, which aims to make WiDi connection easier and more secure for larger organisations with multiple receivers in the same space.  Unfortunately this means that current WiDi compatible receivers won't work with the new standard, and costs are likely to be higher for the new equipment.

So is the wireless display nirvana finally here?  Can we ditch our cables and adapters?  Well not quite yet, but we are slowly making progress in the right direction and it is definitely something to keep a close eye on...

Links:

Intel WiDi & Pro WiDi
Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter