Well, so much for Office 2021 being the last standalone version . . .

[phaZed]

It's been a marketing strategy for many tech companies. Look at Apple in the 80's and early 90's - then cheap Dells from MS in the 2000's to Chromebooks from Google for the past decade or so.

 

[britechguy]

It's been a marketing strategy for many tech companies. Look at Apple in the 80's and early 90's - then cheap Dells from MS in the 2000's to Chromebooks from Google for the past decade or so.

Oh, I never for a moment meant to imply it's a marketing strategy unique to Microsoft. Everybody's been doin' it for decades now!

 

[Philippe]

I do hope, in regard to those two categories, you do make a point to them about the absolute need to log

I do... almost every single day...

Even though I've raked in the cash for countless hours of going through "Forgot my password," and other account access recovery methods, I'd really rather not have to do that as it actually slows down the fix I'm seeking to make. But when I must, I do.

Same here. Not my fault if they don't care... they're paying for it

 

[Philippe]

don't seem to realize that Google is an ecosystem

Same here.

Most who are referring to mail say Gmail while when referring to web searching (which they never say) it's Google/Googling

Well, most people here use their ISP webmail. They often have a Gmail account for their phone, but rarely use / know about it.
"Googling" has no equivalent in French, so we just say "search on the Internet" or sometimes "ask Google"...

 

[britechguy]

"Googling" have no equivalent in French, so we just just say "search on the Internet" or sometimes "ask Google"...

I honestly have no idea what French equivalents might be, but I'm sure what I'm about to discuss has to happen in every country, but for different products.

Those that are either first to market or come to dominate the market often have their brand names become colloquial generic names for "that thing" and the verb-ing of nouns (as in Googling for doing a web search on Google) occurs, too. Here in the USA, you still hear many people, when they want a tissue, asking for "a Kleenex." If they want a gelatin dessert, they never, ever say gelatin, in my observation and experience, but always ask for Jello. For the generations ahead of mine, a very great many refer to refrigerators as Frigidaires because Frigidaire brand was the first to dominate the electric home refrigerator market here.

Because Google came to so dominate web searching, at least in the USA, and when it came to do so, Googling became the verb for doing a web search. I wish that weren't true, as I don't use that search engine and hate even saying "Googling," but most people understand that verb's meaning, instantly, here.

 

[Philippe]

Kleenex & Frigidaire: same here as in the US. No "Jello" over here and Google, as a verb, won't make it, it just doesn't sound right / easy.

 

[sapphirescales]

And there's a simple setting to make ALL onedrive files available offline (stored locally).
View attachment 16038

What's ridiculous is that this isn't default behavior. I'm a computer repair technician. I know how to change my own settings. I'm complaining about regular people, who don't ever change their settings. Since they don't change their settings and this is the default, I'm left with a hot mess and my clients are left without their data thanks to this RIDICULOUS default setting! That's like Apple disabling your physical card when you add it to Apple Pay by default instead of making that an option. WHO would think that adding a credit card to Apple Pay would disable it?! It's the same concept here. Who would think that Microsoft would delete files from your computer because you enabled to BACK YOUR COMPUTER UP with OneDrive? I think having cloud-only files is a great option for people who want that but it should NOT be the default.

 

[seashore]

I think having cloud-only files is a great option for people who want that but it should NOT be the default.

Agreed. Especially as storage is so cheap - why would the average user need cloud-only?

 

[Blues]

Oh, I absolutely believe this is because it's what Microsoft now provides. All of the educational deals over the years were entirely controlled by terms created and (in theory) policed by Microsoft. I have no reason to believe this has changed, and since M365 is Microsoft's flagship product, whether residential or business, it makes sense for them to get students using that ecosystem so they will keep using it after their student days come to an end.

The "fire sale prices" for students and faculty at institutions of higher education has always been a marketing strategy on the part of Microsoft. Hook 'em, then reel 'em in!

I agree MS like a drug dealer get them hooked young so they keep coming back for more.

 

[britechguy]

why would the average user need cloud-only?

Because, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in these parts, some people are digital hoarders. What they actually access, routinely, is a very small part of all the junk they drag around with them, and there's really no point in having it locally.

But, even ignoring all that, with any cloud storage (at least the paid stuff) you have the option of truly cloud-only, streaming down to local temporary storage on-demand, or always present locally and always syncing to the cloud. This is why cloud storage is just so damned convenient, particularly for residential and very small business clients, who are notoriously bad about backing up anything. Your computer or its local storage can be completely destroyed and you lose nothing. You just log in to your cloud-based storage when you fire up the replacement and, bingo!, it all just appears again automagically. This is what has sold me on cloud storage, where even though the terms of service have the CYA that we don't guarantee your data won't disappear, in practice with all the redundancy and professional data center management, they do. Better backup than most people who don't use cloud storage will ever be able to create locally, and definitely if the backups are all in the same physical location as the source. One fire or flood and its all gone.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again, anyone, and I do mean anyone, who is using cloud-based storage and knows it has to know that an account, with login credentials, is how they connect to it. If someone says to me, "But I don't have a Microsoft/Dropbox/Google account and I've never had a password!," when they say something like, "My stuff was on OneDrive," the response is, "Oh, yes, you do and you now need to help me figure out what that is if you didn't keep those credentials. You have to keep all account credentials for email, cloud storage, etc., just like you do for your online banking, credit card, etc."

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What's ridiculous is that this isn't default behavior. I'm a computer repair technician. I know how to change my own settings.

Well, if you think about it...and apply logic to it, you do not want "default behavior" like that.
One of the big benefits of cloud storage is...you can keep WAY MORE FILES in the cloud, than you can possibly fit on your local drive.

Cloud storage really took off when solid state drives were coming out. And...if you recall, the early SSDs were quite small. Wee tiny 64 gig, or 128 gig, maybe 256 gig if you had a massive budget! Say you had 900 gigs of stuff up in the cloud storage...first sync...99.9% full..Whoops...computer ground to a halt.

Businesses, I have clients with 1, 2, 4, 10, 15 TB of storage in Sharepoint/Teams. Would be horrifying if OD defaulted to trying to download all of that.

Logically..."files on demand" is wonderfully efficient. You can have say, 3 TB of stuff up in your cloud account, and only download what you need at the time, or..cherry pick certain folders to store locally. Very cool feature...very cool!

 

[britechguy]

only download what you need at the time, or..cherry pick certain folders to store locally. Very cool feature...very cool!

Which is exactly what I have my client who recently transitioned from an ancient on-prem Windows Server 2003 to M365 business do. The vast majority of his stored data is archival in nature, while a very small part is constantly needed, even if internet service were to go out for days, locally.

He tweaks the "currently active and needed offline locally, no matter what" stuff to "always available offline" for as long as that's necessary. Then, after a project is done, it's transitioned back to "cloud only" option which, with OneDrive/Teams/SharePoint, doesn't mean an instant transition. It will hang around locally until or unless space is needed for other things currently set as "always available offline" when they download as such.

There's also a lot of stuff that's constantly being used in the office that's kept as cloud-only because once something's downloaded locally, that local copy with sync to cloud will stay there, pretty much forever, if you are routinely accessing it. It's brilliant, really.

It's also just so darned easy to flip those switches as needed and let Storage Sense take care of the rest based upon your preferences.

The default settings work perfectly for the vast majority of users. Most have no idea that they are even streaming down a file on-demand if they have reasonably fast internet speeds and the files are small. Accessing a currently cloud-stored Word file, for example, is almost always as close to instantaneous as one can get. Same for image files, etc. Something has to be huge before there's any sense that it's being fetched from "out in the cloud" before it opens.

 

[fincoder]

Agreed. Especially as storage is so cheap - why would the average user need cloud-only?

I disagree. storage is limited in everyday computers. 256GB is still common. It's unusual to come across a laptop with as much as 1TB storage.

Yes the parts to upgrade storage are cheaper now, but there's labour cost and disruption, so why bother if you can "cache" your most used files locally without having to store the lot?

Personally I have one PC with enough storage for all OneDrive files available offline (backup of OneDrive just in case of account problems), other devices don't need extra storage added as they use the default OneDrive settings.