Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Would you give up Outlook?

Robert Scoble twitters: “My Microsoft Office trial is over. I am not spending $450 just to get Outlook. Gmail and Google Calendar win this game: big time.”

and:

“I’ve been watching my usage. In two months I’ve only used Outlook out of the entire Office Suite. Everything else? Moved onto online servcs.”

Yep, the bells are tolling for Office–at least the 1990s Office.

I wonder how fast the transition might be for many of us from Office to some other product. Remember Wordstar in the 80s? And WordPerfect in the 90s? Will we soon be saying the same for Word/Outlook in 2010? Sure is going to be interesting to see how things unfold. I’m voting on change. Who’s change, I don’t know yet. In the past, I would have given the edge to Microsoft, but hmmm… The calculation isn’t as easy as it once was.

I rarely use Office apps too, except for OneNote. The rest of Office I use most often when I have to interact with others in large companies. For the little things, or when working with others I use Google Docs.