As with many of my readers, much of what I do is split between work and home. Sometimes, (like now), I’ll start a document at work to continue later at home. With the boom in online “office clones” that has been gaining ground over the past couple of years, it seems like I’ve tried them all. Not because I’ve wanted to, but because none of them have really done what I wanted, and yes I am picky, or so my wife says.
My favourite at this stage is zoho.com, I don’t feel particularly attached to it, but it is useful for writing the start of blog posts, working on long term documents that are going to got through multiple revisions, and for those documents that require some collaborative input.
If you are still stuck using Microsoft office, at least give open office a try, and see if one of these online alternatives such as Google Docs or Zoho do the trick.
I’m not yet convinced that any of these programs as up to the challenge of being a fully fledged business office suite, but I have read of people doing just that. Do you use any online office applications? Why? Or perhaps, why not?
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Technorati Tags: online office, Google Docs, Zoho, zoho writer, office apps, office applications, web2.0, web office
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I use edeskonline.com
I use edeskonline.com as it’s not only a online office suite but a impressive collaborative tool which helps me to manage small to complex things very easily at one reference point.
Mike, Recently we improved Mike, Recently we improved the import capability of Zoho Writer significantly. If you still experience difficulties, let us know at support at zohowriter com so our folks can look at it. A sample document (without your private data) that shows the formatting issues would be really useful.
Thanks,
Sridhar
Mike;
I’ve been using Google Mike;
I’ve been using Google everything (Docs, Gmail, Notebook, Bookmarks, Calendar) for about 6 months now, and while it’s certainly no ms office, it is sufficient, free, and I believe safe. The Calendar, combined with “Remember the Milk” task manager is great and the doc management is great. The mail, notebooks, bookmarks needs a lot of work.
As a professional in a business that is document intensive, being almost paper-free is awesome…
John
Been away, back now. Great Been away, back now. Great to see zoho checking up on comments about it’s product, it’s tough for businesses to function if they don’t know what’s being said about them.
@John – It’s good to hear success stories, are you a one man company, or has your whole organization adopted Google Docs?
Mike, Thanks for using Zoho. Mike, Thanks for using Zoho. What kind of features would you like to see? Where do we fall short?
We are constantly improving the service, and your feedback is much appreciated!
Thanks,
Sridhar Vembu
Zoho
I know you guys are doing a I know you guys are doing a great job. The pagination and layout tools that you’ve implemented are first class, as is the overall feel of the service.
A lot of the documents that I’m currently working with have special formatting requirements that, to tell you the truth, I want stripped out of the document to simplify things, but I’m not the one who decides that. I don’t expect, or particularly want an online office software to become Microsoft Word, because in some way that is validating the whole MS thing all over again, I’d just like the ability to not lose formatting in a document that I import into one of these online office suites. At the moment I don’t think that any of the competition can do it as well as Open Office, (which itself is not perfect, but free).