Tag Archives: Microsoft Office

Who Wants To Save Forever?

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Save-icon

At the recent SpectraLogic summit in Boulder, much of the discussion centered around the idea of storing data and media in perpetuity. Technology has arrived at the point where it is actually cheaper to keep something tucked away rather than trying to figure out whether or not it should be kept. This is leading to a huge influx of media resources being available everywhere. The question now shifts away from storage and to retrieval. Can you really save something forever?

Another One Bites The Dust

Look around your desk. See if you can put your hands on each of the following:

* A USB Flash drive
* A DVD-RW
* A CD-ROM
* A Floppy Disk (bonus points for 5.25")

Odds are good that you can find at least three of those four items. Each of those items represents a common way of saving files in a removal format. I’m not even trying to cover all of the formats that have been used (I’m looking at you, ZIP drives). Each of these formats has been tucked away in a backpack or given to a colleague at some point to pass files back and forth.

Yet, each of these formats has been superseded sooner or later by something better. Floppies were ultraportable and very small. CD-ROMs were much bigger, but couldn’t be re-written without effort. DVD media never really got the chance to take off before bandwidth eclipsed the capacity of a single disc. And USB drives, while the removable media du jour, are mainly used when you can’t connect wirelessly.

Now, with cloud connectivity the idea of having removable media to share files seems antiquated. Instead of copying files to a device and passing it around between machines, you simply copy those files to a central location and have your systems look there. And capacity is very rarely an issue. So long as you can bring new systems online to augment existing storage space, you can effectively store unlimited amounts of data forever.

But how do we extract data from old devices to keep in this new magical cloud? Saving media isn’t that hard. But getting it off the source is proving to be harder than one might think.

Take video for instance. How can you extract data from an old 8mm video camera? It’s not a standard size to convert to VHS (unless you can find an old converter at a junk store). There are a myriad of ways to extract the data once you get it hooked up to an input device. But what happens if the source device doesn’t work any longer? If your 8mm camera is broken you probably can’t extract your media. Maybe there is a service that can do it, but you’re going to pay for that privilege.

I Want To Break Free

Assuming you can even extract the source media files for storage, we start running into another issue. Once I’ve saved those files, how can I be sure that I can read them fifty years from now? Can I even be sure I can read them five years from now?

Data storage formats are a constantly-evolving discussion. All you have to do is look at Microsoft Office. Office is the most popular workgroup suite in the entire world. All of those files have to be stored in a format that allows them to be read. One might be forgiven for assuming that Microsoft Word document formats are all the same or at least similar enough to be backwards compatible across all versions.

Each new version of the format includes a few new pieces that break backwards compatibility. Instead of leveraging new features like smaller file sizes or increased readability we are faced to continue using old formats like Word 97-2002 in order to ensure that file can be read by whomever they send it to for review.

Even the most portable for formats suffers from this malady. Portable Document Format (PDF) was designed by Adobe to be an application independent way to display files using a printing descriptor language. This means that saving a file as a PDF one system makes it readable on a wide variety of systems. PDF has become the de facto way to share files back and forth.

Yet it can suffer from format issues as well. PDF creation software like Adobe Acrobat isn’t immune from causing formatting problems. Files saved with certain attributes can only be read by updated versions of reader software that can understand them. The idea of a portable format only works when you restrict the descriptors available to the lowest common denominator so that all readers can display the format.

Part of this issue comes from the idea that companies feel the need to constantly “improve” things and force users to continue to upgrade software to be able to read the new formats. While Adobe has offered the PDF format to ISO for standardization, adding new features to the process takes time and effort. Adobe would rather have you keep buying Acrobat to make PDFs and downloading new versions to Reader to decode those new files. It’s a win-win situation for them and not as much of one for the consumers of the format.

Tom’s Take

I find it ironic that we have spent years of time and millions of dollars trying to find ways to convert data away from paper and into electronic formats. The irony is that those papers that we converted years ago are more readable that the data that we stored in the cloud. The only limitation of paper is how long the actual paper can last before being obliterated.

Think of the Rosetta Stone or the Code of Hammurabi. We know about these things because they were etched into stone. Literally. Yet, in the case of the Rosetta Stone we ran into file format issues. It wasn’t until we were able to save the Egyptian hieroglyphs as Greek that we were able to read them. If you want your data to stand the test of time, you need to think about more than the cloud. You need to make sure that you can retrieve and read it as well.

The Microsoft Office Tablet

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OfficeTabletI’ve really tried to stay out of the Tablet Wars.  I have a first generation iPad that I barely use any more.  My kids have co-opted it from me for watching on-demand TV shows and playing Angry Birds.  Since I spend most of my time typing blog posts or doing research, I use my laptop more than anything else.  When the Surface RT and Surface Pro escaped from the wilds of Redmond I waited and watched.  I wanted to see what people were going to say about these new Microsoft tablets.  It’s been about 4 months since the release of the Surface Pro and simliar machines from vendors like Dell and Asus.  I’ve been slowly asking questions and collecting information about these devices.  And I think I’ve finally come to a realization.

The primary reason people want to buy a Surface tablet is to run Microsoft Office.

Here’s the setup.  Everyone that expressed an interest in the Pro version of the Surface (or the Latitude 10 from Dell) was asked a question by me: What is the most compelling feature for the Surface Pro for you?  The responses that I got back were overwhelming in their similarity.

1.  I want to use Microsoft Office on my tablet.

2.  I want to run full Windows apps on my tablet.

I never heard anything about portability, power, user interface, or application support (beyond full Windows apps).  I specifically excluded the RT model of the Surface from my questions because of the ARM processor and the reliance of software from the Windows App Store.  The RT functions more like Apple/Android tablets in that regard.

This made me curious.  The primary goal of Surface users is to be able to run Office?  These people have basically told me that the only reason they want to buy a tablet is to use an office suite.  One that isn’t currently available anywhere else for mobile devices.  One that has been rumored to be released on other platforms down the road.  While it may be a logical fallacy, it appears that Microsoft risks invalidating a whole hardware platform because of a single application suite.  If they end up releasing Office for iOS/Android, people would flee from the Surface to the other platforms according to the info above.  Ergo, the only purpose of the Surface appears to be to run one application.  Which I why I’ve started calling it the Microsoft Office Tablet.  Then I started wondering about the second most popular answer in my poll.

Making Your Flow Work

As much as I’ve tried not to use the word “workflow” before, I find that it fits in this particular conversation.  Your workflow is more than just the applications you utilize.  It’s how you use them.  My workflow looks totally different from everyone else even though I use simliar applications.  I use email and word processing for my own purposes.  I write a lot, so a keyboard of some kind is important to my workflow.  I don’t do a lot of graphics design, so a pen input tablet isn’t really a big deal to me.  The list goes on and on, but you see that my needs are my own and not those of someone else.  Workflows may be simliar, but not identical.  That’s where the dichotomy comes into play for me.

When people start looking at using a different device for their workflow, they have to make adjustments of some kind.  Especially if that device is radically different from one they’ve been using before.  Your phone is different from a tablet, and a tablet is different from a laptop.  Even a laptop is different from a desktop, but these two are more simliar than most.  When the time comes to adjust your workflow to a new device, there are generally two categories of people:

1.  People who adjust their workflow to the new device.

2.  People who expect the device to conform to their existing workflow.

For users of the Apple and Android tablets, option 1 is pretty much the only option you’ve got.  That’s because the workflow you’ve created likely can’t be easily replicated between devices.  Desktop apps don’t run on these tablets.  When you pick up an iPad or a Galaxy Tab you have to spend time finding apps to replicate what you’ve been doing previously.  Note taking apps, web browsing apps, and even more specialized apps like banking or ebook readers are very commonly installed.  Your workflow becomes constrained to the device you’re using.  Things like on-screen keyboards or lack of USB ports become bullet points in workflow compatibility.  On occasion, you find that a new workflow is possible with the device.  The prime example I can think of is using the camera on a phone in conjunction with a banking app to deposit checks without needing to take them into the bank.  That workflow would have been impossible just a couple of years ago.  With the increase in camera phone resolution, high speed data transfer, and secure transmission of sensitive data made possible by device advancements we can now picture this new workflow and easily adapt it because a device made it possible.

The other category is where the majority of Surface Pro users come in.  These are the people that think their workflow must work on any device they use.  Rather than modify what they’re doing, they want the perfect device to do their stuff.  These are the people that use a tablet for about a week and then move on to something different because “it just didn’t feel right.”  When they finally do find that magical device that does everything they want, they tend to abandon all other devices and use it exclusively.  That is, until they have a new workflow or a substantial modification to their existing workflow.  Then they go on the hunt for a new device that’s perfect for this workflow.

So long as your workflow is the immutable object in the equation, you are never going to be happy with any device you pick.  My workflows change depending on my device.  I browse Twitter and read email from my phone but rarely read books.  I read books and do light web surfing from a tablet but almost never create content.  I spend a lot of time creating content on my laptop buy hate reading on it.  I’ve adjusted my workflows to suit the devices I’m using.

If the single workflow you need to replicate on your table revolves around content creation, I think it’s time to examine exactly what you’re using a tablet for.  Is it portability beyond what a laptop can offer?  Do you prefer to hunt and peck around a touch screen instead of a keyboard?  Are you looking for better battery life or some other function of the difference in hardware?  Or are you just wanting to look cool with a tablet in the “post PC world?”  That’s the primary reason I don’t use a tablet that much any more.  My workflows conform to my phone and my laptop.  I don’t find use in a tablet.  Some people love them.  Some people swear by them.  Just make sure you aren’t dropping $800-$1000 on a one-application device.

At the end of the day, work needs to get done.  People are going to use whatever device they want to use to get their stuff done.  Some want to do stuff and move on.  Others want to look awesome doing stuff or want to do their stuff everywhere no matter what.  Use what works best for you.  Just don’t be surprised if complaining about how this device doesn’t run my favorite data entry program gets a sideways glance from IT.

Disclaimer:  I own a first generation iPad.  I’ve tested a Dell Latitude 10.  I currently use an iPhone 4S.  I also use a MacBook Air.  I’ve used a Lenovo Thinkpad in the past as my primary workstation.  I’m not a hater of Microsoft or a lover of Apple.  I’ve found a setup that lets me get my job done.