I remember when I bought my first Mac almost 10 years ago. This was a picture I took with it then. My younger self.
It was a leap of faith from an OS that I was comfortable with at the time (Windows) to one that I had to learn from scratch again. As a first time Mac user I had a bit of a learning curve, like trying to figure out why all my photos were under iPhoto and where were the original photos I could just take out and save on a hard drive.
I’ve been an avid Mac user ever since. Well apart from my home Windows based PC that I use mostly for games. Work wise though it’s been Mac all the way for me.
In the past year though I’ve been paying a lot more attention to Microsoft. I gotta admit that the hype behind Satya Nadella taking over as CEO did have an effect on that. Then I started reading about Windows 10 which many tech journalists say was the best Windows in a decade.
Just about that time, Microsoft Malaysia reached out to me. They knew I was a Mac user but they didn’t want to sell me anything or get me to promote them. They only wanted me to try the new Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office 365 and if I liked it, then they would collaborate with me.
If not then we shake hands and go our own way. That approach rang well with me because I only like really promoting products that I believe in.
Here’s how my first week went: It was PAINFUL!
- Remember that learning curve I had 9 years ago when I shifted from Windows to Mac? Well I experienced that learning curve once again. It wasn’t as bad because Windows is fairly straight forward, but there were things that I knew how to do on Mac in the blink of an eye but had to Google up how to do it on Windows.
- I had also had problems with Outlook. I couldn’t send out emails for some reason. My Surface Pro spent half a day with my tech team before we ended up being able to solve that problem but right after that I had another problem….
- I ran into a problem where I couldn’t visit any Google sites. Not Google, not Gmail, not YouTube. I never realised how much I depended on Google sites. I Googled the Google problem (Lol) and I realised the problem was that my PC’s clock wasn’t in sync. So I corrected it and problem solved.
I gotta admit that I think after the pain I had in the first week, most people might have considered giving up but I pushed on and I’m glad I did it.
After the first week: JOY!
Once I had got to the point where I started feeling at home with Windows again, here’s how I felt:
- Windows 10 really is awesome. It’s quick, intuitive and there were many little things that used to annoy me with the old Windows that have been fixed. For example, in the previous versions of Windows the search bar is practically useless. Type a term in there and it’ll take an hour before it completes its search. Now it’s a live search. Really like Spotlight in Mac.
- Office 365 works better on Windows. Microsoft’s mission is to advocate you using Office 365 on whatever OS you’re on so I use Office 365 on Mac too but the experience somehow feels better to me on Windows.
- Outlook is finally great. There used to be a time when I wouldn’t use Outlook even on my Windows PC. It was slow, crashed a lot and just really complicated to use. The new Outlook works much better and I now use it as my primary email client on my PC.
I wasn’t the only one to experience all this of course. Microsoft got me and another 25 colleagues of mine on to Office 365. The thing that I liked the most was this:
With the smartphone today we start doing more and more things on our phones. We chat with friends on our phones, we take photos and yes we increasingly do more and more work on our phones.
Work on the phone is often a fragmented experience because while we can view Office documents on the go, we can’t edit them. Why? Because our phones didn’t have Microsoft Office on them. The licenses we bought were all for PCs.
I thought this was one of the biggest opportunities in technology. Understanding that people now connect to the internet not through one device anymore but through multiple devices. Once we understand that, doesn’t it make sense that our software licenses shouldn’t be tied to a device anymore but tied to a person?
That’s what Office 365 does
I have been on Office 365 for 2-3 weeks now at the time of writing and it has deeply changed the way I work (I also happened to move the blog you’re reading now to Microsoft’s new Cloud Service called Azure and it’s been great).
Let me break my working on devices into two categories (and I would imagine most of us have similar experiences):
1) Reading and communicating
This is done mostly on my mobile phone. I check emails, reply them and have work conversations on the phone or on some chat apps.
Some emails come with Office files that I think needs correcting but I can’t do it because without Office on my phone, I can only view but not edit. So what I do is I make a mental note to edit that file when I get back to a computer. With a limit on how much I can do on my phone, I don’t maximize my productivity on the times that I work on my mobile.
2) Reading and doing
This is when I get back to the computer and a flush of work comes in at the same time. This is work that has piled up on me from the things that I saw on my phone earlier that I couldn’t act on then to new emails coming in that need attention.
The thing about Office 365 is that I have on license now that gives me access to Office on ALL my devices. So I can do 1) and 2) irregardless of which devices I’m from. This increases the capacity in which I can work at all times and hence my productivity.
Let me give you a real life scenario.
I’m in the car on the way to a client presentation. I have my phone open going through the slides, mentally rehearsing what I need to present when I see a spelling mistake in the slide. It’s a tiny mistake but tiny mistakes like this make the entire slide look unprofessional. So in order to edit it, I have to message one of my colleagues to ask him or her to change that slide and then send me the revised version again.
With Office 365 though, all I do is open up the slide on my phone’s Powerpoint App. And then change it there and then. Save it on to the cloud (One Drive or whatever you use although it makes sense to use One Drive since it comes with Office 365) and done.
Now that I have Office 365 on all my computers, I can avoid bringing a laptop to the office and home. At the office I can just work on my laptop and then save it there. When I get home I turn on my desktop and pick up where I left off.
The thing that Office 365 gives me is that it solves the fragmentation problem of multiple devices when it comes to work. What it gives my team is deeper collaboration with the cloud storage that comes with it (One Drive), conference call tools like Skype for Business and Calendar syncing like Outlook.
If you’re a business owner or are looking for a very fluid experience at work, I’d give Office 365 a shot. I do know however that business owners are bound to have some questions so I’m going to answer them with my own experiences in the next entry.
In the mean time if you haven’t already upgraded your Windows to Windows 10, quickly go claim your free upgrade before the offer ends in July 2016. I’m on Windows 10 and it’s awesome. Small things like in the older Windows, in order to search for something your OS would have to index it all. Now it searches instantly when you type it in the search bar. There’s even an innovation when it comes to unlocking your laptop or device called Windows Hello. Just look at the camera and Windows recognizes you and signs you in.
I gotta admit that with Satya Nadella coming in as the new CEO of Microsoft, I’ve seen a whole wave of change. Not just in the quality of the products that have rolled out since but the way in which Microsoft approaches things. How often did you see Microsoft giving away free upgrades in the past?
I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to try out the full Office 365 experience. As entrepreneurs or business owners we gotta do that sometimes. Step out of our comfort zones to try something different so we can stay ahead. I’m not saying throw away the Mac (heck I still use my Mac every now and then), what I’m saying though is try things.
If you’d like to try out Office 365 you can go here and sign up. Free trials are available so you can try it out before you pay for it.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space