Investigating Online Office Suites

jcatcw writes "Computerworld reviewed four online office suites — Ajax13, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, ThinkFree Online and Zoho Office Suite. None has all the applications and features of Microsoft Office, but if you're looking for the core office applications in an access-anywhere format, at least two were surprisingly sophisticated. The article weighs the ability to save files to a centralized server quite heavily in its ranking. The winner is ThinkFree Office because it provides the most sophisticated features and has the best Microsoft Office compatibility. Zoho's suite is the second choice."

Comments

Re:Unwise to use them for confidential data

[tcopeland]

> It's very unwise to use a hosted-server solution to store
> confidential or private data unless it's encrypted
> and you hold the only keys

And it's not a bad idea to send such documents over an encrypted transport like indi rather than via unsecured email.

So store it on your own server!

[KingSkippus]

One interesting thing I read about their choice (ThinkFree) is that they offer software you can install on your own server to store your documents safely and securely. If you're a company, you could run your own ThinkFree server, presumably with as much security and encryption you want. Or heck, since it only costs $30 per year, I suppose you could run your own ThinkFree server with any security and encryption you want, access your documents anywhere, and still come out way ahead financially if you're willing to give up some of the high-end features of native suites.