M365 web apps versus locally installed Office

[Koldov]

As the title says...

 

TL;DR - Are M365 web apps as good as office installed locally for things like Excel? Is the web version of Excel fully featured?

 

Also does going M365 mean having to go OneDrive/Sharepoint?

 

There is some talk here about Chromebooks and a fair amount of resistance from the Finance and Admin departments.

 

Thing is, I'm guessing if we have to go hybrid (classroom staff/students on Chromebooks, office staff on OVS) I'm doubling my workload and if we go Chromebooks (all staff on Chromebooks and using M365 apps with OneDrive/Sharepoint for office staff) I'm doubling my workload...

 

Don't tell me going Chromebooks is like halving my workload... maybe eventually, but initially there will be quite a change to our working practises...

 

I am having to decide if we sign up to the legacy OVS-ES licensing or 'modern licensing', for 1 or 3 years and whether the full FTE or just the office staff. If I sign up to OVS for three years and go Chromebooks (either all staff or just classroom staff) halfway through year 1 (2 or 3) could I change the FTE or go 'modern'...?

 

Edited May 6, 2025 by Koldov

[3s-gtech]

They're not fully featured, no. I can't tell you the full set of changes - it's probably available online - but when I've tried I think it has been formating and things like that. Decent, but not complete.

 

Chromebooks are pretty good from an admin point of view. They won't halve anything, but even from me with MS and Mac OS experience they were pretty easy to work into the mix.

 

You may need A3 still, so look at what your needs will be from M365. We use quite a lot of A3 licensed bits now, so that guides my hand to the full FTE count. You can't change part way through your 3 years though. Can't advise on OVS-ES or EES or anything there, I lost track of that years ago.

[mikes]

I couldn't see going all Chromebooks decreasing your workload - going Cloud/Chrome has increased my workload if anything when it comes to explaining to staff how things work - that is by far more work than anything on the backend. 

We use Windows machines for staff and IT/DT/Art, and Chromebooks for students - though the systems do interchange - staff do Google marking on Windows etc.

I think even if the web suites were fully feature complete you'll still have pushback due to UI changes, filesystem differences etc. The web Outlook is pretty bad I found if you want anything other than basic e-mail reading.