Microsoft Office Live: It's Free and Easy Comments

Author Simon Williams
Published 2nd Feb 2009
Microsoft Office Live: It's Free and Easy

Comments for Microsoft Office Live: It's Free and Easy

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comment Tchrin said on 2nd February 2009

Just to point out that you now get 25GB of space with SkyDrive, not just 5GB.

--An avid Google Docs user.

comment Jay said on 2nd February 2009

yeah 25Gb it is
also im really liking Live Mesh Beta at the moment and recommend it, it's basically your desktop in the cloud, filestore and syncing folders, also alows you to surf ur pc from a remote location without paying for similar programs. it is even going to work on a mac too. check it out it is really good in my opinion

comment hank said on 2nd February 2009

I just don't get this rush to occupy cloudspace, basic applications, why use bandwidth and time to store files when i have the availabilty of nice cheap HDD, possible charges in time leaving my online business high & dry and have MI5 or the polit bureau signed up yet just questions that spring to mind.

comment Sean Groarke said on 3rd February 2009

You say: "...we've only seen the applications as screenshots...". And at the bottom of each page is a big "In association with Microsoft" banner.

This gives me an uneasy feeling. Is this an impartial review? I'm not saying it isn't, but I'm rather unclear and would like clarification.

comment Ed said on 3rd February 2009

That's just in reference to the online versions of Word and Excel, etc. The rest of the piece is based on currently available applications.

More to the point, though, this isn't a review. It's tutorial/introduction to the Office Live suite, which Microsoft has sponsored us to write. However, we make no judgement on the software, whether positive or negative.

comment Sean Groarke said on 3rd February 2009

Thanks for the clarification. Appreciated.

I know that business is business, and you need income to survive. But it's terribly important to make sure that you don't, even inadvertently, compromise your reputation (which in my eyes is very high, I might add!)

I don't object to sponsored items at all. But I also want to know that I'm reading one. :-)

comment basicasic said on 3rd February 2009

Its nothing more than a 7 page advert for Microsoft, which as you've stated they paid you to write.

He who pays the piper ........

comment smc8788 said on 3rd February 2009

If you don't want to read it, you don't have to click on it. You already know you're going to be looking at a Microsoft product when you click on the link, so I don't know why you're surprised. I've read the article and I didn't find a single sentence where the author says how awesomely great the product is and that everyone should buy it, which is the sole purpose of advertising (which makes even less sense as it is free - if something's free and works, it's hard to complain).

comment Hugo said on 3rd February 2009

Couldn't have put it better myself =)

comment Speedbird said on 4th February 2009

If you are going to start putting Sponsored content in as real articles I will stop reading this site.

I don't agree with smc8788 or Hugo, it is not obvious that this is not sponsored content.

If you want to do this stuff then it should be under a different heading (e.g Sponsored Adverts).

It's a shame to see this sort of thing on this site as I genuinely rate it.
Now I will not be quite so sure about how impartial any other reviews really are (which is what basicasic was suggesting I think).

comment Neil B said on 4th February 2009

I've registered on this site just to comment on other peoples comments on this. This is directed at James and basicasic.

1. The article is quite clearly marked as a tutorial and therefore shouldn't be read as an advert or a review.
2. Have you read the article? It wouldn't be more impartial if it had fence posts protruding from it's backside.

Rant over. Keep up the good work TR, my number one tea break website.

comment Rigsby said on 4th February 2009

Mmm, I don't think it's worth making a big fuss about but the piece was in the 'review' column. May I suggest that articles such as these don't appear in that column in future. It's a nice piece of free software, I have no beef with that, but listing a sponsored 'advert/tutorial' alongside other supposedly impartial reviews was somewhat disingenuous.

comment Riyad said on 5th February 2009

@Rigsby - Everything that isn’t news goes in the left column, whether it be Tutorial, Competition, Feature, Editorial or Preview.

The point of the all the Office tutorials was to give people a better understanding of how, what is a pretty ubiquitous product works. I know that I learned a few things from Simon’s articles, as did others in the TR office.

With articles like this the sponsor has no input into the editorial content whatsoever. TR has been approached countless times about running advertorial content that’s written and provided by a manufacturer, but I have always refused. Every word on this site is written independently, regardless of advertising or sponsorship.

A case in point was a feature I wrote about peripherals that was sponsored by Microsoft. Despite the sponsorship, I spent much of the feature also talking about Logitech and Gyration. And when MS asked if I would remove an image of a PlayStation 3 from the feature, my response was a categorical NO.

comment Ben H said on 3rd March 2009

I really appreciate the reviews on this site, which have guided several buying decisions (I've not been disappointed), but I'm afraid I agree wholeheartedly with @Rigsby.

As a top-of-the-league review site you trade on your reputation for impartiality and expertise. I've nothing against MS Office Live - in fact I think it is a pretty decent offering from Microsoft (and I thought your "tutorial" was really good), but that isn't the point. It wasn't readily apparent to me that this was sponsored content - I think it should clearly stated up-front. Otherwise you risk undermining your credibility - and consumer trust and confidence in your reviews is your best and most valuable asset.

Slight rant over - I look forward to more informed and impartial reviews in the future. Keep up the good work.

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