Slashdot Mirror
GDocs vs. ThinkFree vs. Zoho vs. MS Office
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?"
No!
NO SIG
Do you honestly think a business is going to allow its private correspondence to be handled over the Internet by one of these programs? Unless the company has nothing it would like to hide from its competitors, this isn't going to happen. There is too much fear of corporate spying.
No, they need OOo. Of all the competitors to Office, OOo is the most used one. I know a good amount of people who use OOo and most are even Windows users, yet I know of no one that uses Google Docs, ThinkFree, or Zoho. I'm sure there are some users, but no where near as many as OOo.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
because it isnt sufficiently interoperable with MSoffice.
Wait a second... Lets see, I can save an item in OOo and I can open it up in Office and still get all the text just fine. I can use a saved file from Office and open it up in OOo and still get all the text just fine. However, I can take a saved file from Office 2003 and open it up in Office XP which should be compatible, but wait... The file from Office 2003 looks totally different on Office XP! But aha! I have Office 2003 installed on my laptop... But wait! It looks different on there then on the Office 2003 at work!
Face it. Even Office isn't good at being sufficiently interoperable with Office. But that hasn't killed Office... Yet.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Same objection I always had with GMail.
Google is then in charge of your data.
I don't care if google is staffed exclusively by Ophanim (closest rank of angels to god), I'm not willing to trust a third party with my stuff, and neither should any self respecting company.
And the performance of any RIA will depend on your browser's javascript implementation. That's why I use Webkit as much as possible.
The simple litmus test: Would you submit a resume using those tools?
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
... and then remember that you had another emacs session open in another terminal.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So many companies (particularly smaller ones) don't really know much about computer security, backups etc and what Google provides is probably better than what most mom&pops can do themselves.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Bad article, bad greenlight. Office is way beyond any of the web based 'productivity' apps.
Well, which is it? Never, or not for a while? :)
Well, 10 years ago we couldn't imagine anything like YouTube, and the idea of streaming media was almost laughable back when most people had dial-up. The very idea of a browser on a cell phone would have been seen as impossible, and a phone that would be driven purely by a touch screen was the stuff of science fiction and would have cost $1000 easily. 10 years ago, Linux on the desktop seemed like something that was impossible. 10 years ago, a $200 desktop or a $300 laptop would have been looked at as if it was a scam. Yet today just about everyone visits YouTube, uses streaming media, and nearly every phone has a browser, and the iPhone has been a success and now only costs $200 (well more if you count in what expensive plan AT&T tries to put you on). Linux is pre-installed on many laptops and desktops today, and we have the $200 gPC and a $300 EEE PC. So, when I say, for a while, it means that today it sounds impossible, but 5-10 years from now, we might all be using it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Get real. Difference between you and "self respecting companies" is that they don't have a stash of porn they're trying hide.
"Self respecting companies" usually have a CFO whose job it is to make sure that money gets spent wisely. Let's consider having you or some other geek team manage my corporate data vs. doing it at Google:
Security:
Geek: encrypts stuff, holds me hostage
Google: Google datacenter security
Risk:
Geek: let's face it, would sell his mother (never mind the customer database) to get laid
Google: Google approach to risk management
Litigation & discovery:
Geek: will send lawyers whatever he's been asked to by his boss, and maybe a bit extra "by mistake"
Google: Will respond to specific and valid legal requests
Service cost:
Geek: can never have enough (hardware, salary, perks, etc.) can't bother to come in wearing a clean t-shirt
Google: $50 a year. Regardless of volume or usage. Upgraded continually.
I won't even mention the fact that you already trust a number of companies with your data - unless of course you've dug your own ditch and laid your own fibre between offices.
Google is staffed by asswipes like every other company. Unlike your employer, they just manage that risk.
None of them are all that great. Do Google Apps do everything Office does? No, clearly not. But frankly, I think Office is overrated.
The point of Microsoft Office isn't that it's the greatest Office suite ever, it's that in a Microsoft setting, it's easy to integrate with a lot of other things so that everything ends up as Word documents or Excel sheets (or starts that way and ends up being something else).
As a standalone suite, pretty much anything will do the job unless you're always locked into Microsoft land (especially with huge Excel macros).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
This is way off-topic, but given the series of posts you've made, I think it needs to be said here.
Sometimes, a course of study at a school is designed by people who are actually smart, and they weave general knowledge of the field and awareness of the possibilities carefully throughout the various classes on more specific subjects. When you're taking such a course, almost by definition it is unlikely that you have yet gained the skill and experience to appreciate this.
Your attitude implies that you think you know better than your teachers, and that you insist on making your own judgements on the merits of what they teach. While both self-driven learning and healthy scepticism can be good things, you might like to stop occasionally and ask whether you are missing something that someone more experienced is trying to show you. From your posts here, it will be very clear to many of us who do work professionally that you have missed an opportunity to learn several useful things here: not only LaTeX, a widely used tool in its own right in some fields you might work in later, but also the experience that learning a new tool often doesn't take as long as you think, for example, and perhaps a few practical skills for preparing a good formal document. And you have given all this up just because instead of taking the enormous 5–10 minutes required to learn a new tool recommended by your teacher, you have stubbornly insisted on doing something your own way. If that is your mindset, you are pretty much doomed in any future career you might wish to pursue in the computing field.
You do not know everything. Suck it up, learn a bit of humility, and make the most of opportunities to learn about stuff, because you will probably never have the same kind of opportunity again and you will regret it if you don't. And please don't think I'm writing this just to patronise you. I used to be like you, and so probably did a lot of the other posters here, and I bet every one of us would take a different approach if we could do it again.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.