GDocs vs. ThinkFree vs. Zoho vs. MS Office 226
CWmike writes "Web-based productivity suites, once almost a contradiction in terms, have become real challengers to desktop applications. Google Docs, ThinkFree, and Zoho, have all made major improvements in recent months. They're becoming both broader, with more applications, and deeper, with more features and functionality in existing apps. The question is: Are these three applications really ready to take on a desktop-based heavy hitter like Microsoft Office?"
easier way to quit emacs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:eh (Score:3, Informative)
collaboration dataloss bugs (Score:5, Informative)
We tested and use Zoho and Google; both had serious collaboration bugs:
* Users could overwrite each other's others changes without knowing it. For example if Amy edits a cell (in the spreadsheet app) or text (in the word processor), and the update doesn't reach Bob in time, Bob could overwrite the same data with his own.
* Edits sometimes are not updated on other users' sessions quickly enough or, in some cases, at all.
Before you count on it for serious work, beware. It seems like a fundamental issue they should have anticipated on day one.
Re:eh (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed. Nothing which is remotely hosted, unless it's hosted on your own server, will ever be a serious office application.
Proprietary information is only proprietary as long as access is controlled.
Anyone who thinks a web-based office application is a good idea does not understand TANSTAAFL.
Yes! Good enough in 90% of the cases (Score:5, Informative)
I run my own one man IT business and all and I really mean ALL of the documentation is handled through Google Docs.
It is great for collaboration purposes. Version management build in and to top it all off, I never have to worry about access or backup! Especially not with Google Gears that ensures access even when the internet is down (Never happens here)
Now google docs is indeed not too great if you want to do Desktop publishing which is what some people seem to think MS Word is for. I do need the odd picture included in my documents but I wrote a little application to streamline that process.
I made it available for free on my Google site of course. My program Pastry will archive every bitmap you copy and allow for easy upload to Google or anywhere else for that matter. Have a look on: http://vandinther.googlepages.com/pastry [googlepages.com]
Re:Welcome to the 21st Century, Print is Dead. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure if you knew this or not, but Word actually has had "Track Changes" feature for quite a while - I agree it's not the greatest of implementations, but it does the job - especially in smaller office situations like you describe above.
Also, if you have your document on a shared drive and someone else is editing it, you have the option of letting Word notify you when the document is available again.
That might help your boss next time.
Re:Doesn't sound like it (Score:3, Informative)
If it was a document I really cared about, I wouldn't use Word either. It has horrible typography.
For stuff that I really want to look beautiful, I use Latex, and for very technical documents that need to be really precise, DocBook/XML.
Rich.