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?"

Comments

No....

[Darkness404]

I don't think that web apps will ever replace desktop apps for a while. First off, the issue of screen resolution. It is really easy to get OOo to work on my EEE PC even if it wasn't already installed, on the other hand, Google maps shrinks to a tiny little box. And even though decreasing the size in Firefox 3 makes it bigger, the font size becomes too tiny to even read. That's not to mention all the mobile devices that can have a ported version of OOo or Office to them with a customized interface to work well with each device while the web-based app doesn't cut it because it is too small. Will all these bugs be ironed out in the next 5-10 years, I would think so. But for now, no web app is ready to take on the desktop environment until it works well with various screen resolutions. (Google docs doesn't suffer from this problem, but Google maps does and I haven't tried either ThinkFree nor Zoho)

well

[stoolpigeon]

I spent a decent amount of time today reproducing an OO.o spreadsheet in Google Docs - still a long way to go there before it is a threat. The gDocs spreadsheet does some cool things for a web app - and I was impressed with some of the features (for a web app - see how I have to keep qualifying?) but it still doesn't come close to the desktop app.

Are web apps the new cross-platform darling?

[antifoidulus]

From TFA:
And because you work in a Web browser, they're cross-platform applications by default:

At work we are going through some issues because Apple decided to deprecate Quicktime for Java and now we are scrambling to find a replacement that will work on Windows and Macs. However, honestly writing cross-platform apps that play movies and deal with databases and lots of networked files isn't trivial to make cross platform, but it might be pretty easy if we went to the web. Is this the future direction for "cross-platform" applications?

Are we serious here ?

[Cochonou]

Last time I had to use the Google Docs suite (3 months ago), it was to access a shared spreadsheet: each people had to fill in what food or drink they were bringing in at a party, in order to have some kind of co-ordination. The "shared document" concept is really nice, however the AJAX controls were killing the performance of my laptop from 2004. So I have trouble imagining doing work with such a solution - at least with my configuration.
Of course, it would be probably better with a newer computer, but I feel sad that an application which is recognised as being a hog such as MS Office runs better on my computer than Google Docs. (I took a glance at TFA, and it seems to imply that Google Docs is the fastest solution of all 3).

performance seems to have improved; who'll use it?

[bcrowell]

The last time I tried the google docs spreadsheet (maybe 6 months ago?), it was ridiculously slow. I was about to post here and point that out, but then I thought I ought to check how the performance was today, in case it had improved. Well, I don't have any real data, but my subjective impression is that they must have made vast improvements in its performance since the last time I tried it. It really seems fine now.

The question in my mind now is how many people are really going to want this.

• A lot of users aren't going to use it, for the same reason they're still running IE5 -- they've always "had Microsoft," and they're not the kind of people who are interested in tinkering with software.
• Serious users aren't going to use it, because it doesn't have the right features.
• I'm not going to use it, because I'm getting along fine with gnumeric and ooo, and I see web apps as a free-as-in-beer solution that would be a step backward from free-as-in-speech.

I teach physics at a community college, and I have a bunch of linux boxes in the lab alongside the windows machines. The linux boxes only have Ooo, and the Windows boxes have both Ooo and Excel. It's been interesting seeing how students react to being presented with a choice between Excel and Ooo. I actually have documentation in the lab manual for Ooo, and none for Excel. Nevertheless, the vast majority don't want to mess with Ooo. Even if they have never used a spreadsheet before in their life, Excel is a brand name they've heard, so that's what they gravitate toward.

Doesn't sound like it

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I just visited the home page of each of the three alternatives mentioned, and read their own words about what features their word processors offer. It was hard not to laugh: they actually describe things like being able to save your files and collaborate with others as features. I'm not sure any of them even mentioned a single real word processing feature anywhere on their list. And while some of the on-line features they plug have some merit — though I suspect many of them are really only gimmicks of little real world value — of course being on-line comes with some major downsides in the security and reliability areas.

Then I read TFA. (Yes, really. It's quiet night. ;-)) I think this quote is the most telling:

All three of these word processors are capable of tasks such as formatting the typefaces, placing and sizing graphics, arranging paragraphs, and setting up tables. But only ThinkFree offers the really sophisticated features, such as letting you format a hanging indent.

(Emphasis added)

If adding a hanging indent is sophisticated, these things aren't even glorified text editors, never mind word processors. Where's my real-time word count and spelling checking? My document structuring and organisation tools? My cross-references, footnotes and bibliographies? If they're going to pimp my pages, can I at least have a smart H&J algorithm and use my professional grade OpenType fonts? There is more to a word processor than basic text editing and the occasional picture or table!

I think it's safe to say the guys in Redmond don't need to start throwing chairs. The on-line apps aren't even Word from nearly two decades ago, yet.

The thing is....

[greenguy]

None of them are all that great. Do Google Apps do everything Office does? No, clearly not. But frankly, I think Office is overrated. Granted, my copy is a couple of years old, but I just don't have much use for it. I open most things in OpenOffice, but even then, I'm converting a lot of it to text. I find all office suites ponderous and bloated, more by feature creep than any particular flaw in coding. Send me text, and I'll put it in Scribus or LaTeX.

Google Docs should be thought of as a highly-collaborative text editing environment, not a word processor. It looks exceptionally good when you look at it that way.

I use Zoho for sharing docs

[rochlin]

I use Zoho Writer everyday to share frequently updated docs among co-workers. It's buggy, terrible for printing, and not completely dependable. But it's damn convenient for that kind of sharing. Especially if updates are only needed a couple times a day. When I started using it a year ago, it was better than Google's alternative, though I think Google has now passed it.

Still, if I'm going to type anything for printing I'll use Word. If I'm going to do anything that doesn't need to be continuously shared, I'll use one of the office apps. If I need a spreadsheet of any complexity, I'll use Office.

I'd much rather see Google & Zoho polish the features they do have (Zoho still can't print in Landscape format, has nothing close to WYSIWYG printing, and frequently locks. Google has no locking to prevent users from overwriting each other (last time I tried it...). Don't bloat till you've got the skeleton working.

interoperability more important than many realize

[jollyreaper]

I work at a non-profit. While we use Office internally, some of the groups are shifting to Google Docs for community outreach. Why? Because there's no software to buy, information can be shared between remote and local users, updated instantly.

I've tried using Word's version tracking features and they tend to fall down. Google Docs will allow simultaneous editing but it's auto-save feature needs work. It saves every 30 seconds so you can end up with a thousand edits that don't really mean anything. Two features that need to be added: the first feature is a data edit session. If Joe reviews the document, he can open a session, make his changes, and close the session. So when I want to see what Joe did, all I have to do is hit a filter that says "Highlight Joe's last session." Or maybe I could say "highlight all of Joe's changes." The other feature that would be great is versioning. After I finish my first draft, I promote the document to second draft and continue editing. Then I can track changes between draft 1 and draft 2, 3, etc, Joe's contributions between draft 1, 2, etc.

At this point in time, Excel is the only Microsoft application I actually like. Google has a way to go to equal that. But for data aggregation, Google Spreadsheets work just fine. Anyone can open the sheets, enter data, and I can copy and paste into Excel for anything more. Nobody has to own Excel or download anything, they can enter the data from any desktop in the world. Word gets grudging credit as the only good option for funky printing requirements. I haven't tried out OO for this yet, it may be up to snuff now.

Where Word really chaps my ass is that there's been no improvements in what's broken since I first started using it. Styles is borked, formatting is borked, there's little flexibility in layouts, tables are buggy, trying to size ANYTHING becomes an exercise in frustration because you cannot position by pixel but by arbitrary jumps, etc, etc. None of these problem areas are addressed, we're just buying the same old broken code with new turd polish each and every version.

Microsoft is still the king for now but there are dozens of companies and open source projects in the race to smoke their asses. If they keep standing still, they're going to be in it like kippers. Office 2007? Fucker can't even share user resources properly. If I want to share contacts from 2007 to someone with 2003, I have to go onto his fucking machine and add myself in as an alternate mailbox. I have to go into tools, mail servers, exchange, add it in. WTF? And the stupid mail invite that goes out when you invite someone, nevermind getting permissions proper when it does things automagically. Grr!

Re:performance seems to have improved; who'll use

[bcrowell]

I just got an email from a google developer working on google docs who saw my comment on above, and was happy that someone had noticed the improved performance. He says they started a feature freeze a few months ago, and spent the last few months working exclusively on performance.