Mobile Office 2010: Free, and worth every penny

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 is now available for those using Windows Mobile 6.5: a nice enough upgrade considering it's free, but you wouldn't want to pay for it. Office Mobile came out as a beta last year, but now is available from the Microsoft Marketplace, bringing SharePoint Workspace and remote control of PowerPoint …

[Anonymous Coward]

start of the (smartphone) art

how do the five main smartphone paltforms stack up these days in terms of Office apps?

- Windows Mobile (6.x as 7 is still all rumor)

- iPhone (might not be the best selling but it's the one with the column inches)

- Symbian (Nokia still loves it)

- RIM (it's a business phone after all)

- Android (these are not the 'droids you're looking for)

Would be great to see a head-to-head and weigh the platforms for those who need documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the go... is a Smartphone enough to leave the laptop at home?

[Tom Chiverton 1]

You left out Maemo/MeeGo

You left out Maemo/MeeGo, which is a shame, because it can OpenOffice and KOffice perfectly well, *right now*.

[John Sanders]

I've tried

To explain and convince many customers that they can edit word or excel files on their WinMo/Blackberry/Iphone.

And almost everyone said that the only use of word and excel on a smartphone is to have a quick look at attachments to see what the file is all about. They will open the file later on their computers and read it properly. Everybody says the screen is too small to work or read with any comfort.

[Tezfair]

Phone killer?

I have 2010 pro plus on MAP installed and its pretty much killed my laptop. Soooooooo damned slow now. Hate to think what its likely to do to a mobile.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

I reckon it's probably a different program on a phone...

Just a hunch.

[KarlTh]

As far as I'm concerned...

..they're all shit. Inevitably; because you're trying to do things on a tiny screen with a wanky little stylusy thing. It's all Sirus Cybernetics Corporation stuff - the satisfaction gained from getting it to work serves to hide the fact that it doesn't do anything useful.

Want to know how much time you've spent typing in a few words with a stylus which would have taken a few seconds on a computer? There's an app for that.

[braces self for flood of posts about how marvellous they are]