Windows 10 Tech Preview Build 9935 + Universal Office Apps
So as a part of its Windows 10 strategy MS announced the concept of Universal Apps and this last week released preview editions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Windows 10 Tech Preview folks along with an update to build 9935.
I've been running the tech preview as a secondary OS on my desktop and as primary on my Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. On the Desktop I'm only running the new Universal Office apps - on my tablet I have both Office 2013 and the universal apps. So the good news is at least they can coexist on the same device. As many of you are aware getting multiple versions of Office to live on the same device was often an exercise in futility.
I've really seen not much new with 9935 versus 9926. The only area I had any challenges with is getting the latest Intel HD graphics drivers to install on my Venue Pro. They fail with a compatibility error which means there are probably some Dell mods that have been made the impact the generic Intel driver. Versus others I have not experienced a lot of errors with 9926 and so some of the changes described in 9935 did not effect me in the same way.
The big difference with the Universal apps is the layout of the Office Ribbon and it's orientation towards touch. Versus Office 2013, your ability to easily navigate menu items and select sub menu items is greatly improved.
But to be honest that's about it and just as with Office 2013 apps - the challenge on tablets is the on-screen keyboard. Whether in portrait or landscape mode the keyboard often blocks the active content you are trying to work with making it difficult to really create effective content.
Similarly doing even simply select for cut/paste or Excel functions like selecting a group of numbers to add to a =sum cell are painful. Could I do some quick edits to an existing doc ? - sure - but I would not want to try and have to create a complete new doc using a tablet.
Especially if the content required a template with complex headers / sub headers, tables, etc. Okay - yes I can use my pen to highlight and notate items, but BFD - that does not get you to a final doc - just a notated doc you are send off to someone else to finish.
Is the new UI overall cleaner and simpler - yes and maybe it's the way that the ribbon should have been in the first place. But to say that I would use Office more on my tablet because of the Universal app - no.
Let's face it - content creation apps like Word, Excel and Powerpoint really need a device with a dedicated keyboard and mouse to be truly effective. Yes there are simple things you can do on a tablet - but they are no where near as effective. And that is especially true with devices that have screens smaller than 10 inches. My Venue Pro is a nice - portable read it, watch it, listen to it device - but do I used it to create serious content - no. This to me is why hybrid devices like Surface, Lenovo's Yoga and Dell updated Venue 11 Pro are the best choice.
There is really only one MS app that was truly designed for touch/tablet/stylus from day one and that's OneNote. And to me OneNote is alternative to running around with a paper notebook, but still you need to really understand the app - have a good stylus and clean handwriting to make it worth while. I try and use it as a paper notebook replacement when going to meetings - but I often find my notes afterwards somewhat unreadable due to the poor stylus and pen options with many tablets, the Venue 8 Pro included.
And then there are some just stupid things. This is a preview - yet for some functions - MS says - oh you need an Office365 subscription for that feature. Hey MS - I'm testing this for you and you can't give me that for free.
Also Word has just shutdown a few times in the middle of editing and I have to re-launch and start all over. And once again MS makes the default assumption that I am saving everything to OneDrive, but gets confused between using the local cached content or the cloud and even though it's there - can't seem to find it correctly. Sure this is a preview app - but those basic function should work correctly.
Also once again there is no Outlook. I don't understand why MS seems to be changing direction here. They recently purchased a company called Acompli and rapidly spun out an MS branded version of their app and called it Outlook. But the UI is a complete departure from Outlook and really doesn't line up with the rest of Office. Maybe that will change by the time the new Universal Office releases this fall - but not counting on it.
And I'd still like to see more of the Office portfolio. Like Visio, Project, etc.
All in all so far I can say that Windows 10 on both devices as a core OS appears to be stable in terms of supporting multiple hardware platforms. There is still work on the UI and consolidation around new features like the settings tab, notification tab and start menu.
I am concerned that this will not be ready come this fall. Here we are in February and if MS continues at it's current pace of a new released build every 60 days - then there may only be 3 more releases (March, May and July) prior to RTM - which all publications are saying is sometime in September. MS has already announced that the new Windows Server will not be released until 2016 and I fear that Windows 10 is going to be delayed as well.
Microsoft's vision around a consistent experience across phone, tablet, laptop/desktop and game console is great. The challenge will be in execution and so far that execution is just fair. I am concerned that the end result for Windows 10 will only be part of the way there. The challenge will be that I'm not sure how many more versions of Windows will users have to wait to see the MS vision realized. And will they care by the time it actually gets there.
I've been running the tech preview as a secondary OS on my desktop and as primary on my Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. On the Desktop I'm only running the new Universal Office apps - on my tablet I have both Office 2013 and the universal apps. So the good news is at least they can coexist on the same device. As many of you are aware getting multiple versions of Office to live on the same device was often an exercise in futility.
I've really seen not much new with 9935 versus 9926. The only area I had any challenges with is getting the latest Intel HD graphics drivers to install on my Venue Pro. They fail with a compatibility error which means there are probably some Dell mods that have been made the impact the generic Intel driver. Versus others I have not experienced a lot of errors with 9926 and so some of the changes described in 9935 did not effect me in the same way.
The big difference with the Universal apps is the layout of the Office Ribbon and it's orientation towards touch. Versus Office 2013, your ability to easily navigate menu items and select sub menu items is greatly improved.
But to be honest that's about it and just as with Office 2013 apps - the challenge on tablets is the on-screen keyboard. Whether in portrait or landscape mode the keyboard often blocks the active content you are trying to work with making it difficult to really create effective content.
Similarly doing even simply select for cut/paste or Excel functions like selecting a group of numbers to add to a =sum cell are painful. Could I do some quick edits to an existing doc ? - sure - but I would not want to try and have to create a complete new doc using a tablet.
Especially if the content required a template with complex headers / sub headers, tables, etc. Okay - yes I can use my pen to highlight and notate items, but BFD - that does not get you to a final doc - just a notated doc you are send off to someone else to finish.
Is the new UI overall cleaner and simpler - yes and maybe it's the way that the ribbon should have been in the first place. But to say that I would use Office more on my tablet because of the Universal app - no.
Let's face it - content creation apps like Word, Excel and Powerpoint really need a device with a dedicated keyboard and mouse to be truly effective. Yes there are simple things you can do on a tablet - but they are no where near as effective. And that is especially true with devices that have screens smaller than 10 inches. My Venue Pro is a nice - portable read it, watch it, listen to it device - but do I used it to create serious content - no. This to me is why hybrid devices like Surface, Lenovo's Yoga and Dell updated Venue 11 Pro are the best choice.
There is really only one MS app that was truly designed for touch/tablet/stylus from day one and that's OneNote. And to me OneNote is alternative to running around with a paper notebook, but still you need to really understand the app - have a good stylus and clean handwriting to make it worth while. I try and use it as a paper notebook replacement when going to meetings - but I often find my notes afterwards somewhat unreadable due to the poor stylus and pen options with many tablets, the Venue 8 Pro included.
And then there are some just stupid things. This is a preview - yet for some functions - MS says - oh you need an Office365 subscription for that feature. Hey MS - I'm testing this for you and you can't give me that for free.
Also Word has just shutdown a few times in the middle of editing and I have to re-launch and start all over. And once again MS makes the default assumption that I am saving everything to OneDrive, but gets confused between using the local cached content or the cloud and even though it's there - can't seem to find it correctly. Sure this is a preview app - but those basic function should work correctly.
Also once again there is no Outlook. I don't understand why MS seems to be changing direction here. They recently purchased a company called Acompli and rapidly spun out an MS branded version of their app and called it Outlook. But the UI is a complete departure from Outlook and really doesn't line up with the rest of Office. Maybe that will change by the time the new Universal Office releases this fall - but not counting on it.
And I'd still like to see more of the Office portfolio. Like Visio, Project, etc.
All in all so far I can say that Windows 10 on both devices as a core OS appears to be stable in terms of supporting multiple hardware platforms. There is still work on the UI and consolidation around new features like the settings tab, notification tab and start menu.
I am concerned that this will not be ready come this fall. Here we are in February and if MS continues at it's current pace of a new released build every 60 days - then there may only be 3 more releases (March, May and July) prior to RTM - which all publications are saying is sometime in September. MS has already announced that the new Windows Server will not be released until 2016 and I fear that Windows 10 is going to be delayed as well.
Microsoft's vision around a consistent experience across phone, tablet, laptop/desktop and game console is great. The challenge will be in execution and so far that execution is just fair. I am concerned that the end result for Windows 10 will only be part of the way there. The challenge will be that I'm not sure how many more versions of Windows will users have to wait to see the MS vision realized. And will they care by the time it actually gets there.
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