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

Doesn't Matter

[jkiol]

I still prefer emacs *Awaits bashing from VI users*

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

[klenwell]

I've been satisfied with Google D&S, mostly because it's now well integrated (bundled?) with my Gmail account. Then I tried to print a hard copy of a Google Doc for the first time yesterday. Now I'm less impressed. (Google's definition of a 'pt' and Word's are way off.)

Still, the sharing feature is cool. But the Gmail integration is the main reason I'm loathe to try any alternatives.

Re:Google Docs and Spreadsheets

[rowama]

I've also been using Google docs for a while now. Not the word processor, but the spreadsheet s/w. It suffices, but there are limitations that I would not be able to live with for most spreadsheet needs. For example, no simple way to address a full column or row, no way to do range intersections, no range naming, etc. I've lost data on more than one occasion when the backend lost contact with the server. It reverts back to the previously auto-saved version. I use it for one reason now: keeping track of billable time. I can live with the limitations in this case because I need to access it from several computers in several locations. Evenso, I may soon move the spreadsheet to openoffice.org and use a thumb drive for portability.

A good thing about the article is that it made me realize there may be a better alternative in ThinkFree.

Unwise to use them for confidential data

[davidwr]

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 or you've got a contractual agreement that the hosts will never look at the data absent a court order and that they are liable if an adversary breaks in for any reason other than your negligence.

Keep this in mind when you use services to create or save documents. It doesn't matter if it's a spreadsheet, email, or what-not.

And for heaven's sake don't store my credit-card number on Google. CowboyNeal's maybe but not mine.

ThinkFree FTW

[AKAImBatman]

Unsurprisingly, ThinkFree was chosen as their preferred "online" Office Suite. FWIW, ThinkFree is an amazing piece of software that blasted onto the scene back in '99 - '00. The most amazing part of it was how it so closely resembled Microsoft Office. Given it's age, it's no surprise that it "won" this comparison.

Of course, there is a caveat. Thinkfree uses client-side Java rather than being pure-Ajax. This gives it a distinct advantage as the Java GUI tools are far more mature than the embryonic Ajax GUIs. Basically, it was a bit of an unfair fight. Which would bother me, except that Thinkfree Office is an excellent product, and deserves the exposure.

So if you find yourself with a need for a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software on the go, keep Thinkfree in mind. It may cost money, but it's quite a bit more convenient than a Linux LiveCD. :)

It could be a LOT better.

[Kadin2048]

The ability to integrate Gmail and D&S could be a big advantage, but frankly I've been a bit disappointed that they haven't leveraged it more obviously.

Case in point: a few days ago someone emailed me a DOC file. Why isn't there an option to open it in D&S? It'll view it as HTML, or Download it, but what I'd really like would be one-click to turn it into an editable, publishable document. As it was, I had to download it, then re-upload it to D&S in order to produce an editable version. Not a huge problem, but if I had been on a computer where I wasn't allowed to save documents, it would have been. It's just stupid to make me pull a document down to my local machine from one Google server, only to upload it back to another Google server a minute later.

Also, when you do have a document open in D&S, why isn't there an option to email a copy to someone? Okay, I know I can invite them to edit it online, and I could always publish it and send them an invite, but why not something where I can send them a DOC version as an email attachment? That's a lot easier for many people to deal with. And while we're at it, how about some form of change tracking that would let me email a copy to someone, let them edit it offline, and then a way to re-import it to D&S (via the one-click, above) so that it would be change-tracked, as if they had logged-in to edit it? Expecting everyone to have a Google ID to edit documents is ridiculous. I can't convince everyone in my family to get Google IDs, much less everyone I'd like to share documents with, everywhere.

I think it's a great service, and a great start. But it has a long way to go, even within becoming part of Google's "suite" of services.

real-time versioning

[wordsthatendinq]

I've only used Google Docs (which I still prefer to call Writely because it has fewer syllables) though I'm sure the others are similar.

The one feature that I find novel is the way it does revisions, especially for multi-author documents. The Writely revisions interface is looking more and more like MS Word's "track changes" but with the additional benefits that (a) many people can edit at the same time, and (b) you can see all revisions ever made, whereas in Word, once an author overwrites his own revisions you can't see the old version anymore.

What's worked pretty well with a lot of my colleagues these days is to do everything on Writely until the text is complete, then one person downloads it and does the formatting in Word. (Then submit the paper and get rejected, but that happens with or without Writely.)

That said, I still think LaTeX looks the best but I don't know as many people who use it.

Only really good for small-scale use

[compupc1]

I believe these types of thin-client office suites will never move beyond a novelty, at least with the current architecture of the web. Some random reasons why:

• Privacy. Do you really want all your personal, private documents being stored on some remote server?
• Reliability. Not only do you depend on your computer being up, but you also depend on the remote server being up and your network connection being up.
• Mobility. While on one hand, a web-based application does offer greater mobility, it also requires an Internet connection. I can't count the number of times I've worked in a car or at some other location without connectivity.
• Responsiveness. There will always be a latency involved that far exceeds that found on fat clients.
• Capability. I'm sorry, but the whole web 2.0 phenomenon has pushed HTML, CSS, and JavaScript far beyond what they were intended for. As long as we're relying on these technologies, documents created with web applications will never be as capable of the expressiveness of a documents created with a fat client. Using applets or ActiveX or something like Flash would probably mitigate this.
• Development. Thin clients are arguably easier to develop than fat clients. However, as soon as you introduce things like AJAX and complex scripting into the picture, things balloon out of control at an alarming rate. You spend most of your time fighting the basic request/response nature of the web. AJAX is really just one big hack to overcome this. AJAX is nice for adding bits of dynamic functionality to web sites, but it shouldn't be used for stuff like this. In fairness, I should note that better tool support and frameworks like the GWT and RAP will go a long way twoards addressing this.

Say it with me class, "you pick the right technology for the job". Thin clients have their place. Office suites is not one of them.