Story time....
A few weeks ago, I came across two gift cards to Best Buy that I had been given, but completely forgotten about. I checked them and they were unused and had the full marked amounts.
Not being in need of anything, I decided to purchase an Insignia NS-P08W7100 tablet and folio cover for my Church. (The total cost was below the total gift card amount so, I have a fair amount left over).
I brought the stuff home, put the tablet into the folio, powered it up and began the registration process. I created a temporary Outlook account with the knowledge that a more permanent one would be forthcoming.
The little tablet updated properly (running the 2015 version of Windows 10) and worked well. I took it to Church and let the person would be the primary user spend some time with it.
Two days ago, the tablet received the Anniversary Update for Windows 10. I loaded the OS up and brought the tablet home to get all of the updates...50M FiOS at home vs. 7M DSL at Church.
I then set out to create a more permanent account for the tablet. After the account was opened in Outlook, I then began to wipe the tablet and register it under the new account.
For some unknown reason, the tablet would not fully reset. It kept stopping the process due to an error of some kind each time I tried to execute the factory default.
Having seen this before with my Surface units, I proceeded to download a clean copy of Windows 10.
Now, the tablet was running the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10, and, I thought the it would receive a fresh copy of the OS as Microsoft had not pushed the Creator's Update out to it as of yet.
Wrong....the tablet received the C.U.
I completed the OS and patch downloads and updated the apps.
Now, here is the "fun" part. The tablet came with mobile versions of Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Those programs were removed with the new OS. The legacy Notepad and WordPad programs still exist though.
I checked the App Store and the mobile apps are nowhere to be found.
I went to Office and checked out the situation. The usual subscriptions to Office 365 are there. But, towards the bottom of the page, I saw a section devoted to Cloud versions of Office apps.
I checked and the account has been given space in Office Cloud. Of course, there is more space available on One Drive.
So, I'm guessing that going forward, unless we purchase a subscription to Office 365, or purchase one of the untimed Office offerings, users of the tablet will be creating documents using the Cloud and then storing on One Drive.
Being the first time I've experienced something like this, I found creating test documents in Office Cloud and moving them to One Drive a bit cumbersome to the way I've done computing since I first laid my hands on a TRS-80 back in the 8th grade.
Is this the way most computing is going to take place in the not-too-distant future? Is this the principle behind Chromebooks and similar devices? I suppose if I were in school now, as opposed to the 1970's and 80's, this might not seem so unusual. But, to an...dare I say..."old timer", this is going to take some getting used to.
