Microsoft Office: Hard to Carry, Hard to Displace

At work I'm a heavy user of Microsoft's Office suite, particularly Excel. I will use word-processing and presentation programs other than Word and PowerPoint, but some of my Excel workbooks have man-months invested in their design, programming, and data tables. Spreadsheet competitors claim 100% compatibility with Excel, but I have not risked a switch. I would be betting my livelihood on their claims that functions and macros work perfectly on their product.

The iPad is a convenient reading, viewing, and game-playing device. Microsoft Office on the iPad would be welcome because I much prefer carrying the lightweight iPad to heavier laptops.

OnLive has released a cloud-based "full featured" version of Office that will work on the iPad. Per the WSJ's Walt Mossberg:

I found OnLive Desktop to be a notable technical achievement, but it has so many caveats that it's best for folks who absolutely, positively need to use the full, genuine versions of the three big Office productivity programs on their iPads.

Some of the drawbacks are: the user must be connected to the Cloud, the iPad's virtual keypad won't work (nor will an attached mouse), and documents must be transferred directly to or from OnLive, not through other avenues like e-mail.

So we're not there yet. Until Microsoft releases Office for the iPad, I'll continue to schlep around a laptop.