Thinking about getting Office 365, not sure if it's worth it

[bounou]

I currently use Google Drive for all my spreadsheet and doc needs, it's basic and does the job and i really don't need anything more.

This would of been a perfectly acceptable solution that i would of kept using if my work had not starting blocking Google Drive access.

I have 3 basic questions really before I decide.

The webapps and iOS apps for Office 365, how do they compare to Google Drive? Better? Worth paying 70$ a year for?

How is the new outlook for mac? I mostly use the Gmail/Inbox webapp for my mac but have been looking for something better for a while, Mail and Postbox were constantly annoying me with password re-prompts so i stopped using them, how is outlook for mac?

When they say unlimited storage for one drive they really mean unlimited? I have about 3TB i would love to put up there if it's included in the membership.

Thanks for the help!

 

[seasurfer]

I currently use Google Drive for all my spreadsheet and doc needs, it's basic and does the job and i really don't need anything more.

This would of been a perfectly acceptable solution that i would of kept using if my work had not starting blocking Google Drive access.

I have 3 basic questions really before I decide.

The webapps and iOS apps for Office 365, how do they compare to Google Drive? Better? Worth paying 70$ a year for?

How is the new outlook for mac? I mostly use the Gmail/Inbox webapp for my mac but have been looking for something better for a while, Mail and Postbox were constantly annoying me with password re-prompts so i stopped using them, how is outlook for mac?

When they say unlimited storage for one drive they really mean unlimited? I have about 3TB i would love to put up there if it's included in the membership.

Thanks for the help!

I think is worth it if you want to use Office. Office is far better than Google Doc.

Regarding OneDrive vs Google Drive, there is no question that Google Drive is faster, however given the price, OneDrive is better for the buck. Google Drive may be fast, but you have to pay $10 per month for 1TB, with OneDrive, you pay less but you get unlimited. (you will get 10TB first and then unlimited).

I already received my 10TB, an upgrade from 1TB, Onedrive plan is to give subscriber unlimited storage over the next few months. So yeah, it is going to be unlimited.

In my opinion, if your goal is to have backup storage, Onedrive will serve the purpose very well. If you have very big files (I am talking about gigabytes of files) to upload and download everyday, Google drive may be a better options, if speed really matter to you.

One drive speed is not that bad anyway, it is about 2/3 the speed of Google drive.

 

[bounou]

I think is worth it if you want to use Office. Office is far better than Google Doc.

Regarding OneDrive vs Google Drive, there is no question that Google Drive is faster, however given the price, OneDrive is better for the buck. Google Drive may be fast, but you have to pay $10 per month for 1TB, with OneDrive, you pay less but you get unlimited. (you will get 10TB first and then unlimited).

I already received my 10TB, an upgrade from 1TB, Onedrive plan is to give subscriber unlimited storage over the next few months. So yeah, it is going to be unlimited.

In my opinion, if your goal is to have backup storage, Onedrive will serve the purpose very well. If you have very big files (I am talking about gigabytes of files) to upload and download everyday, Google drive may be a better options, if speed really matter to you.

One drive speed is not that bad anyway, it is about 2/3 the speed of Google drive.

Speed is a non issue, i have a raid 5 setup at home so this is strickly for the offsite backup needs, i could get a bunch of drives and leave them at work but this is way more convenient for sure.

The storage is not the primary use, i have spreadsheets i access multiple times a day. I need something that is cross-platform and on everything.

 

[seasurfer]

Speed is a non issue, i have a raid 5 setup at home so this is strickly for the offsite backup needs, i could get a bunch of drives and leave them at work but this is way more convenient for sure.

The storage is not the primary use, i have spreadsheets i access multiple times a day. I need something that is cross-platform and on everything.

In that case both Google Drive and One Drive meet your need, either one will be fine.

 

[JuryDuty]

For me it's 100% worth it. For $66.99 on Amazon right now (was $63 earlier t his week), you get 1 year of Office for 5 Macs/PCs PLUS all your iPads and iPhones.

Then, on top of that, you really get unlimited storage. I changed my Mac folders so all my documents, pictures, videos and even iTunes library are on OneDrive (that is, backed up/synced up to it). It's awesome.

It's also caused me to give up SugarSync, Dropbox, Google Docs/Drive. Just don't need them.

Whodathunk my favorite Mac marriage is with a Microsoft suite?

 

[GoingDark]

For me it's totally worth it, I vastly prefer Microsoft Office apps to their Google equivalents.

Outlook for Mac is basically the same as Outlook for Windows, not one of my favourite programs by far but better than Apple's built-in Mail app.

The OneDrive storage is going to be unlimited for everyone once they roll it out, but as another poster already said, they have rolled out 10TB for the majority of people already, so you should be fine uploading your 3TB of stuff.

Since it works out to between $6-$8 a month (depending on whether you took advantage of any Amazon sales etc) it's worth it for the OneDrive storage alone, never mind the full Office suite of applications.

 

[campyguy]

I signed up for the free 30-day trial and tried it out. I also had a free 1-year subscription from the "bring in your iPad" deal earlier this year, so I had nothing to lose. I also have a rare 2-license Office 2011 package, so I knew what I was getting into on the Mac...

After trying out the service, I've ditched GDrive and moved over to Office 365 and its services altogether. I installed Office 2013 on my Win 8.1 virtual machine and am digging OneNote. Outlook 2014 is usable - I haven't had any issues with it for my Office 365 accounts (P1 for email) and Exchange Server 2013 - after I remembered I had to create an app-specific password for my iCloud account (doh!).

FWIW, the updated Office apps came out today and they're really slick - universal for iPhones and iPads now, a new interface, Dropbox integration and much faster than they were before the update - I'm using mine on a VZW LTE connection and Word and Excel work very well.

As for the storage thing, the UL storage will be rolled out over several months. There is a request to be bumped, and I did and now have a 10TB capacity (as others have reported). I subscribe to Comcast Business Class - no caps - and have UL data on all of my VZW handsets and iPads, so I can start filling up that 10TB! OneDrive on iOS is a bit slow to load - but I think it hasn't been updated yet.

I'll be selling my Office 2011 licenses and applying them to Office 365. I'm happy with it and not going back to GDrive anytime soon.

 

[Belmont31R]

The new Outlook app is good for me. I use Office 365 business because I need email hosting with my own domain but the new Outlook app is always the first to give me email notifications. That with the same account on the stock mail app, and on my iPhone. Something to be said for EAS/Exchange. However Outlook is not a one app fits all like the stock clients. It won't sync Gmail very well. Outlook is designed primarily for Exchange. If you use Gmail then its not for you. Outlook is an enterprise email client, and most enterprise people use Exchange.


Overall, if you use something like outlook.com email, I think the 'Home' O365 is still a very good value. I have some reservations about storing sensitive info on OneDrive as its been implicated in the NSA's PRISM program, which I don't like at all.


Even with unlimited cloud storage the file size limit is 10GB so if you want to upload a huge video file that might be an issue.

 

[maflynn]

I found it to be a good buy. You get to install office on 5 computers/tablets. You have unlimited OneDrive storage. XX amount of Skype minutes (I don't use this feature) and you can have your family also have their own OneDrive.

Value is in the eye of the beholder, but given that I have free upgrades, unlimited storage, and I'm running office on multiple devices (Mac/iPad/iPhone), its a good deal and recommend it.

 

[johannnn]

Hope it's ok I chime in with a question of my own.
The reason I got excited of OneDrive was actually that it's in Mac App Store.
I've heard that Dropbox uses some finder hacks in order to integrate with Finder. I assume that Google Drive does the same thing. But I assume all App Store apps play by the rules.
Add to that, that I get unlimited space I have to try it.
I'm just a little bit worried about a warning during installation (see attached screenshot), during the selective sync step.

What does this mean? Are they really saying that if I disable syncing a folder that is on my Mac already, the files on OneDrive will be deleted?????

I have a MBA with 128GB so I cant have all my 1TB data (currently on external drive) synced with my computer, but I really dont want to use a solution where I'm afraid to get all my files lost...

 

[JuryDuty]

Hope it's ok I chime in with a question of my own.
The reason I got excited of OneDrive was actually that it's in Mac App Store.
I've heard that Dropbox uses some finder hacks in order to integrate with Finder. I assume that Google Drive does the same thing. But I assume all App Store apps play by the rules.
Add to that, that I get unlimited space I have to try it.
I'm just a little bit worried about a warning during installation (see attached screenshot), during the selective sync step.

What does this mean? Are they really saying that if I disable syncing a folder that is on my Mac already, the files on OneDrive will be deleted?????

I have a MBA with 128GB so I cant have all my 1TB data (currently on external drive) synced with my computer, but I really dont want to use a solution where I'm afraid to get all my files lost...

That is a weird warning. But what it's saying is that the OneDrive folder on your Mac is reserved ONLY for files you're syncing with OneDrive. If you stop syncing a folder inside the OneDrive folder, it will remove it from your MBP (but don't worry--you won't lose anything--it's still in the cloud service side).

So, if you want files on your MBP but not in the cloud on OneDrive, you have to move them outside the OneDrive folder. If you want files in the cloud on OneDrive, but not local, just selectively tell it not to sync that folder back down to you MBP.

The warning serves to say that if you tell it to stop syncing a folder, it'll remove it locally, but it'll be in the cloud--but be careful because if you delete it in the cloud, too, it's gone for good.

Make sense?

This is actually great because it allows you to keep terabytes of data in the cloud for access at any time, but off your MBP. And you can have local files you're working with that won't waste time syncing (such as your your desktop). As long as you keep it out of your OneDrive folder, it won't sync. So, for instance, when I pull a bunch of videos off my camcorder, I put them on my desktop first. They're not wasting time syncing, so I can go through and delete whatever I don't want. Then, what I do want, I just upload to OneDrive through the web interface, so it won't be on my MBP if I've said not to sync the folder I upload them to. If there's something I DO want to sync, I just move it into my local OneDrive folder and it's synced immediately.

 

[Drewski]

Regarding OneDrive vs Google Drive, there is no question that Google Drive is faster, however given the price, OneDrive is better for the buck.
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One drive speed is not that bad anyway, it is about 2/3 the speed of Google drive.

There certainly is a question that Google Drive is faster. Just tonight I uploaded a 100MB folder to each service, twice, and took the lowest time from each, on a consistent reliable cable connection in Chicago. I haven't tested the download speed. My best time to upload to Google Drive was 163 sec, best time uploading to OneDrive was 82 sec. But as you said, neither is bad, and the transfer time probably isn't an issue unless the user is uploading/downloading massive amounts of data on a regular basis.

I use both for various sharing and backup applications. Google is nice to use for realtime sharing Google Docs for free, but they are both as easy to use for bulk backup.

I'm currently paying $1.99/month for my 100GB Google space, but am strongly considering moving everything to the unlimited space from Microsoft that comes along with a subscription to Office 365.

 

[reese2147]

I'm currently paying $1.99/month for my 100GB Google space, but am strongly considering moving everything to the unlimited space from Microsoft that comes along with a subscription to Office 365.

In my opinion, there is not another cloud storage service that can touch OneDrive. With Office 365 providing unlimited cloud storage and full use of office on my macs and iPad, its simply too good of a deal.

I struggled for a few weeks over the summer trying to force myself into the Apple "iWork" eco-system. While Pages and Numbers may work for the care minimalists out there, I find them to be unintuitive and clunky. As soon as iCloud drive was available, I immediately hopped on board for the 200Gb plan. ............ what a total waste of time.

Until Google or Apple puts out an office productivity suite that is a true threat to office, Microsoft will be the way to go. The recent cross-platform and "cloud first" push they have been making has been very impressive and Apple continues to lag behind. Hell, I even switched my email and calendaring to outlook.com and couldn't be happier.

Who knows, when Windows 10 is released it may be enough to convince me to go to Microsoft for my hardware too.