ITP Blog Lab

Since its initial release nearly thirty years ago, the package of software applications known as "Microsoft Office" has taken over the business sector across the globe, controlling roughly 90% of the market. I remember, as early as second grade, sitting down in front of a desktop computer with a .doc file and typing away. At the same time that elementary schoolers like myself were learning the software, businesses were adopting it too. Most of a company's text files could be found in the .doc format. This puts Microsoft Office in a unique position for millions and millions of files are saved in their style of document, and if a company tried to open these documents in another application, it is almost guaranteed it would not look the same as when they initially saved it. You may be able to tell from my last blog post that I do not care for Microsoft Office and much prefer Google Drive, but as an individual, this switch is easy for me to make. Students are not the primar...

It has never been easier to type documents, present slides, or produce spreadsheets than it is today and that fact is partly due to the vast number of software and web applications available to store these kinds of files. There are many different types out there but I would like to explore what most college students use on a regular basis: Microsoft Office, IWork, and Google Drive. Personally, I prefer Google Drive but there are benefits to each system. Microsoft Office was a little slow in creating an online, shareable application so computers across networks would be able to access the same document at the same time, but they eventually got there. This is a great program for those who are loyal to Microsoft, but when compared to the sleekness of the born-online Google Drive, it falls behind.  Here  you can find out more about the important differences within Microsoft's own programs like the online, desktop, and mobile version if you are interested. Within Microsoft's sy...