[chrisjsmith]

That will end up in pain and tears for thousands of students and staff alike.

My trial of Office 365 lasted 45 minutes i.e. until I realised how much pain it is to get data back out of the Outlook and Sharepoint implementations. They just don't want you to do it.

It's the WORST lock in I've seen in any product.

[kenjackson]

Can't you just import the PST file into another mail app? And for Sharepoint there's a power toy: http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/index.php/stsadmpowershel...

[rbanffy]

Even the list hurts the eye. It still baffles me why Sharepoint is so pervasive in the market.

[kenjackson]

Does the list of commands for csh or emacs hurt your eyes too? I can read virtually every command and know what it does. This is certainly clearer and easier than the magic emacs and vi incantations. ZZ

[weaksauce]

I don't know though. using a text editor for you daily job and remembering the magic incantations because it makes you much faster seems worth it while the magic incantations to migrate your data away that you might use once does not. It's not really a valid comparison. If MS cared about vendor lock in they wouldn't expose that stuff via a command line tool. They would instead do it via GUI which is the de facto interface of windows ease of use.

[kenjackson]

The problem is that exporting all files and documents isn't common user functionality. It's generally an admin task. And for users where this is common you can map everything to a local folder, in which case you just use Windows Explorer drag drop, just like any other folder. For admins, command line tools are their standard UI.

As you even say yourself, for a task you might do once ever, why would you add a button to clutter the UI? That's like Apple adding a button to the iPhone to indicate that you'd like to terminate service with your carrier. Just wouldn't make any UI sense.

[rbanffy]

I have seen more than one Sharepoint intall crash so badly that the company was crippled for hours because they couldn't access their documents nor be sure they were working with the most recent versions. Having a regularly (as frequently as needed) exported mirror is a top priority for any SP-like application.

And, of couse, when you do realize SP is utterly awful when compared to its competitors, it makes the migration a lot easier.

I can easily imagine a migration from SP a couple years down the road would cost a lot more than the US$250K they are being offered to leave Notes (which is every bit as awful as SP)

[chrisjsmith]

Forget the UI. It's not important.

It MUST be common user functionality both for private and corporate users.

People have completely unjustified trust for these cloud-based services when in the face of it, they screw people's data up all the time. You should be able to maintain an offline archive of all of your data to guard against vendor failure.

To be 100% honest, at least here in the EU, I think they should legislate to make sure that a) you can get your data back when you so desire and b) the data should come back in an open format.

[chrisjsmith]

Because there are consultants. That is the only reason!

[rbanffy]

Consultants alone won't explain that. You need clueless people making technology decisions on subjects they can barely understand, under advice by snake oil salesmen.

[chrisjsmith]

Fair point. I'll give you that.

[chrisjsmith]

You HAVE to buy Outlook to get the PST file out by syncing your local outlook with the Exchange Live server which is unacceptable. You can't access the data any other way.