There's an Apple version of Office so they couuld to it there
So its not portable?
MS isn't interested in Solaris so even if they went through the web that would be no.
Umm if they went HTTP the OS would not matter
Actually it's network generic, just not OS generic, goes fine over TCPIP, if your Windows (or Apple) machine can get to the network share it'll work.
The first implementations all ran on networks using WINS and other windows protocols that even Microsoft has abandoned.
Actually the MS implementation is very *portable*
Yea you can port it to any version of windows they tell you that you can use...
You're not making sense, if the desktop was driven by the home market, and thin client doesn't take off at home, then it's not going to take off elsewhere.
There is a desktop and a server market. This will, I think, have some impact on the server market and might change they way offices do business. The savings in terms of maintenance *alone* is huge.
There is no right way to implement it because the very concept is flawed.
It's as portable as it needs to be. You can logon to any machine on your network or that can get to your network and work on your documents, that's as portable as anything needs.
If they went to HTTP then they'd have to go through a browser and the UI would revert to Word5 (web based UI is nearly identical to Win3.1, which was aweful). A giant leap backwards to accomplish nothing of any use.
WINS is ancient history, they've all worked on TCPIP since at least 1998.
Don't need any more portability than that, it's a WINDOWS application.
It's not going to change how anybody does business. There is no savings.