[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]

Agree about Notes being as awful. I had to suffer that from '99-'02. Looked like it improved after that but you can't polish a turd as they say.

I've watched SharePoint go with a spectacularly large boom when some muppet renamed the AD domain... That was a fun two days of my life reverse engineering it believe me. Thank goodness they did write it on top of the CLR as it's easy enough to decompile then to work out what the hell is going on.

[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.