A new ploy by the convicted monopolist to add proprietary crap to the net.

Wao... I hope Telkomsel Flash User can use this with 6 KB/s. The most slow and expensive Internet in Indonesia 6 KB/s at expense 6 BIC MAC in a month unlimited. Damn I really want to use the office online. But can I?

But is it free?

We are talking about Microsoft here.... of course not

Some how i find this a bit less useful than google docs, i mean who thought it was a good idea to release word without the ability to edit documents? Without that ability you might as well just call it the MS Word Reader, hopefully it will be a bit lighter on the system than acrobat.

and it probably requires IE7+ and installs a custom ActiveX control called Office13 that weighs about 500MB )))
But seriously... I wonder whether it will work in anything but IE.?

Probably not, but that doesn't matter! Almost all companies of a respectable size has bought licenses for microsoft office (perhaps in addition to using openoffice or similar package), and for those companies it's a welcome news. Everyone's connected to the internet, especially businesses. So if you have to use your mobile broadband connection to open word, fine, so be it. It's still cheaper to buy a license per employee than buying one per pc, and it'll ease servicing immensely as downtime is unlikely. We ARE talking microsoft, not google or twitter - and microsoft's never down.

I think this kind of software will become a lot more widespread as web interfaces evolve. The fact that many casual games have moved from being silly visual basic programs to being flash or java based games indicates the direction.
I tihnk only hardware intensive stuff (autodesk, high profile games, photoshop etc) and interface limited applications (plc programming software etc) will be limited for the time being. Until cloud stuff takes off, which it will as it more or less guarantees licensing money from customers, and with the option to passthru serial and usb links over the interweb.

This will make government data mining much more meaningful and thorough. They'll be able to maintain a full library of every document a business or person uses.

They just have to keep people away from alternatives like Open Office.

Shouldn't be hard. Having been exposed to more Open office menace than I'd ever thought possible, I can say that it is in no way a threat to microsoft's unless we look at purchase cost solely.

Who cares if it's free or not? MS Office has always been a pay for product so if they charge for an online version then no-one is going to stop using it. Honestly, some of you fuckers think the world owes you a big fat favour. If you don't like it then there are plenty of free alternatives so fuck off to Open Office.

I'm guessing this Microsoft effort is aimed at the corporate world. What happens if there is a major problem with the web?

then it won't matter, as nothing else the company does works anyway.

Damn, beat me to it. Got a good point though, I work service desk and when the network goes down it's pretty much down tools till it is fixed. That's why firms like AT&T and BT invest so much effort to make sure the network doesn't go down.

Over 17500 islands, 6000 are inhabited and 237 million people over huge tracts of open ocean, over 150 active volcanoes, regular earthquakes and tsunamis. Let's see an integrated telecommunication network in that kind of environment!

Just to rub the Indonesian noses in it, didn't T-Mobile announce 21Mb mobile broadband? GODDAMM!!! I love living in the West.

Yes it's FREE, they have already stated it would be.

In google docs it's already long possible to make excel files etc...

I hope this doesn't require Silverlight, which still doesn't officially support Opera.

Why the hell should it? Why should MS pay money to support other peoples software? You dont see Apple investing R&D to support installing on a PC. They want you to use their stuff and rightly so.

Interesting and also free.Worth looking into.

Apple's browser does work on pc.
(Safari for Windows.)
Office online will only run on Windows computers with IE and maybe Firefox because a lot of people are using it.
(But firefox uses standardized java and other stuff that are also supported in other browsers e.g. Opera, Safari in the same way.)
This means, if they make it to work on Firefox, it will probably work on Opera, Safari, Chrome,...

That's the advantage of standards, they provide a path for compatibility between different products.
Don't settle for interopability only, it only means a big fat fail to standards compliance!

I love all the complaining and bashing of things you guys have never used. I heard from the really early beta test of this last spring that it worked extremely well. I don't recall whether I heard anything about Firefox compatibility or not but I'll see if the source still has access.

Really strict NDA on it though.

cloud computing... well it can run crysis...

Yes, Office Web apps will be free (ad-supported, but free - there are no ads on the service at the moment though).
Yes, they work in Firefox, and Safari, and Chrome.
No, you don't need Silverlight, though Word does tell you you'll get a better view of documents if you install it.
No, there is no Office 13 download or ActiveX control.

Editing in the Word Web app is promised in an update; I'm sure we'll look at it then but for now you can see the details of what's on the preview at http://www.techradar.com/news/inte [...] artc_pg=1.