MS is spending a lot of time and effort trying to overcome the cloud of their previous actions where they did their level best to eradicate their competitors by any means necessary, even if they were morally in a grey area. The latest volley in this effort is their move to make MS Office available on the Android tablets for free. They have MS Word, MS Excel and MS Powerpoint available and the reviews so have have been very good even though the apps are technically still in Preview mode.
Today, we are excited to announce that we are further expanding the preview. We want more feedback from more users to ensure that Office apps work well on a range of different Android tablets before launching the official apps. To participate in the preview, you can use an ARM-based Android tablet running KitKat or Lollipop, with a screen size between 7″ and 10.1″. Starting today, anyone can go to Google Play and download the Word, Excel and PowerPoint preview apps. No waitlist. No requesting access. Just go and download the apps!
Office apps are one of the apps that need to be there on every OS. I have tried a lot of the alternatives like OpenOffice and other clones but I keep coming back to MS Office because of the stability and compatibility that it gives me with other Office users. On my Linux machine I use Crossover to have a native install of Office and it works great. When I get some time and restore Android to my Tablet (I am trying to install Kali Linux on it) I will try Office out on it even though I don’t see myself editing a lot of documents on the tablet.
Well this is all for now. Will write more later.
– Suramya
Source: androidcentral.com and Microsoft Blog Announcement