Microsoft One Drive and Office Online
Posted: 7 March 2014 Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: cloud computing, cloud services, Microsoft, Office Online, One Drive, security, Win 7 7 CommentsDon’t be shocked now, but this hardcore Slackware Linux user does still have an MS Windows operating system (Win 7) installed on a partition on my main system and one on my office laptop.
I know some of you are highly disappointed to hear this, but fret not. The only reason I have Win 7 on my main system is for gaming. I don’t use it for anything else. Slackware is most definitely my daily production OS, but the PC games I play perform much better in Windows. It’s just easier for me to play them that way than in any kind of virtual environment. Also, I do need to stay up-to-date on MS Windows in order to be tech support for my family and friends whom I haven’t converted to GNU/Linux yet.
Anyway, tonight I was bored, so I consolidated my Microsoft login credentials and signed up for their One Drive (formerly Sky Drive). It was fast, simple, painless, etc., as is most Windows point n’ click world these days. One Drive is basically MS’s Dropbox; works pretty much the same way, too. However, you get more space (7 Gig) with your initial One Drive account than with Dropbox (2 Gig).
I like the way MS has tied in all their services and connected them to the unified login. I do have one complaint, though. They’re trying to improve security with two-step verification and all that, but they still do not allow passwords greater than 16 characters. What’s up with that MS?
The Office Online service is pretty neato, too. You just go there and start using Word or Excel or whatever. It’s all saved to your spiffy new One Drive account. Ah… computering in the clouds. Ain’t it all grand? Till it gets hacked or crashes. This stuff is all pretty cool, but I probably won’t ever use it for anything of any importance. I don’t trust cloud computing. I want my important data on my own SECURED GNU/Linux systems, not swingin’ out there in the breeze on someone’s cloud servers.
But that’s just me. Try Microsoft’s new One Drive and Office Online services. They are pretty COOL! 🙂
Later…
~Eric
Nocturnal Slacker v1.0 
Yes, Microsoft’s One Drive and Office Online are nice and also work in Linux as I noted in SNF where I used my Linux computer to access Office Online and saved a document to One Drive publicly to show it worked in Linux too!
Very cool. As are iCloud’s online document creation with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iCloud storage, and Google’s online Google Docs and Google Drive.
Well, a web-based cloud app should work in any operating system, I would think. I can access my Dropbox in Windows or Linux anytime. Spiffy stuff. I don’t really need or use it due to my distrust of all things outside of my own system that I can’t maintain myself. However, still pretty neato. I may have a looksee at iCloud, too. But sorry, no evil Google apps for me. Thanks. 😉
I agree, but it wasn’t always so with Microsoft. There was a time when you had to use IE to make use of their stuff.
True. There are still quite a few sites online these days that require Internet Exploder. I just change my useragent in FF and all’s well. 😉
Hi, Eric,
What I like about MS Office online is that you can now produce .odt files with it. They used to impose .docx as the only save format before.
–Mechatotoro
Hola, mi amigo!
Office online supports .odt now, huh? That is very cool. I didn’t know about that. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and reading, Mechatotoro. I know I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve been enjoying just using my computers rather than tweaking, breaking, and fixing all the time.
~Eric
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to find anything but .docx there. Too bad! It saves automatically using that format and there are no “Save As” functions. Deal breaker for me…