Office365 - what are the costs to use?? How does it compare to google mail??

Quote:

Originally Posted by edutech4schools

Most of my schools went with Google.

As you have done with MS why don't you setup Google Apps for Education and see for yourself before jumping with MS. It can be set up using your school domain and was a much easier process than the MS setup.

The Google system was imo much more joined up under the hood.

Had that for quite a while now, if it's out there I'll set it up ;)

Main reason for sticking with MS is that in the courses we teach jumping between the Google and Office interfaces would cause confusion... proves the web apps work when people come in using the Word app and don't notice a difference compared to the desktop one. Also Google Apps won't be too clever at preserving Office document formatting from what I've seen. I did like the Moodle 2.0 repository for Google Apps though, wish MS would do something similar which is a constant source of frustration for me and many others on Live@Edu at the moment.

It's so annoying because MS have everything there to make Office 365 awesome but have to say Google APIs and setup process seems a lot better... too many hoops to jump through with 365 and still uncertain about the online file storage element. Is it Sharepoint "My Files", is it Skydrive?

Also still have no idea on the education pricing, will it be covered by EES or is it separate? What are the timescales for release and current customers being upgraded? We're nearly a year on from the initial announcement and not a great lot seems to be happening?