Online office alternatives
Without a doubt the buzzwords of 2009 are “cloud computing”, a description for a new era of computing in which applications are run over the Internet instead of being run directly on a PC desktop. It is a radical shift away from the old model in which users generally purchased software and then installed it on their desktop.
The new model means that users will use applications installed on a server that may be in the same town as them or even on a different continent. And instead of paying to own these applications, users will instead either use them for free or pay a nominal fee based on how often they use them.
Internet-hosted applications are not a new idea but, as we head for the middle of 2009, they are becoming a daily reality and many users are starting to look at them as an alternative to expensive shrinkwrapped software from their corner PC dealer.
One of the areas in which online applications has begun to flourish is among office suites and so we took a look at three of the better ones on offer.
So much of the Internet is dominated by Google that it’s not surprising that one of the better online Office applications is from Google. The company’s Google Docs and Spreadsheets was first launched in late 2006 and is already very popular among users keen to shrug off Microsoft Office’s domination.
Working with Google Docs is pretty straightforward and intuitive and mimics the more popular office applications already available, so the learning curve is pretty low. Google Docs has good revision control which means authors can view changes made over time to the document. This is also useful when sharing a document with multiple authors which Google Docs does. One of the advantages Google Docs has is that Google already has an extensive registered user base for its other products such as GMail, so using Docs is a just a click away for most users.
As with most online office applications Google Docs is highly capable but not 100% Microsoft Office compatible. Which means that it is perfect for most everyday uses such as writing letters, crunching numbers and storing data, but when it comes to complex spreadsheet usage it will occasionally fail. If you’re the financial director of a multi-national corporation you’re better off with a heavyweight spreadsheet. But if you’re a home user or small business it’s worth checking out Google Docs.
In use Google Docs is snappy and very responsive and offers a significant array of file formats, from PDF and HTML to OpenOffice and .doc format. With the exception of opening and saving files, Google Docs responds like a desktop based application, making it easy to forget that it is in fact an online application.
Of the three applications here Google Docs and Spreadsheets has the simplest layout and is the one most obviously different to Microsoft Office.
ThinkFree is an attractive alternative to Google Docs which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and a presentation tool along the lines of PowerPoint. ThinkFree’s applications are extremely rich in their functionality and can open and convert documents into a range of formats.
Even without a user account users can use ThinkFree.com to view and convert documents. A Word document on a local drive, for example, can be viewed using ThinkFree’s viewer before being converted into a PDF or text document.
With a user account, however, ThinkFree comes alive and lets users store their documents online, create new ones or share them with colleagues. Sharing documents is one of ThinkFree’s key benefits as it makes it easy to invite fellow users and manage the flow of documents.
Earlier versions of ThinkFree were a little slower than many of the other services available but this does appear to be improving, although there is still a natural lag in opening and saving documents. It does depend on the document being edited, however, and sometime the lag can be annoying.
While Google Docs allows users to share documents with other users, ThinkFree takes this to a new level and makes collaboration a key part of its application, which makes it one of our favourite online office suites available. It is in its file sharing capabilities that ThinkFree comes into its own, and the fact that it has a vastly more attractive interface than Google Docs. The downside of that interface, however, is that it is slower than Google Docs.
Users can sign up for their own ThinkFree account or they can use their Google userID to login, which makes ThinkFree quickly available to a wide audience.
While ThinkFree Office does a few things exceptionally well, Zoho does an exceptional number of things well. Which makes it hard to compare to Google Docs and ThinkFree. At last count Zoho offered more than 20 online applications to meet just about every need, from online chat to project management to email to word processing.
The downside of the sheer number of applications on offer from Zoho is that its individual components tend to be less capable than some of the other alternatives. Which is not a problem if your needs are fairly basic but if you need to be opening multi-sheet complex spreadsheets with Zoho you’re probably going to struggle more than you would want to.
The upside is that Zoho applications are quick when dealing with straightforward documents although saving them often has a noticeable lag. Zoho’s Writer application is speedy, more attractive than Google Docs and it offers a wide range of file format options to rival ThinkFree and Google Docs.
As with all the other applications on offer Zoho makes it easy to share documents with other users for collaboration. In addition to it’s own user process, Zoho also allows users to log in with their Google or Yahoo identities which makes it very easy for most users to start creating and editing documents.
Zoho is not as full featured as the previous two applications but with a broad range of other tools also available to users it makes a worthwhile offering to home and small business users that don’t want to shell out thousands of rands for an a suite of office tools but still wants a good selection of alternatives.
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