Replacing MS Office: Online!

Or you could get OpenOffice.org and solve all the Word, excel, poerpoint, publisher needs for free...Also "Windows nessager" is just MSN messanger in a different .exe file.

I think he's going for online solutions so OpenOffice wouldn't qualify. And no, MSN Messenger is not just a renamed exe. There is a lot more stuff (mostly crap) in MSN Messenger.

Writely also currently isn't available for use while Google takes over and makes some changes.

You have a list of (mainly very nice) products that mostly do little tasks, not full featured like Office.

However, there are some full featured complex online things that are compatible and can replace Word, EXCEL etc (at least for most people).

Thinkfree, for example, is a complet office compatible online suite for example (no I dont work for them) and works well.

http://www.thinkfree.com/products/index.jsp

I am sure there are others.

Regards

there are great free apps for almost all of my needs... except voice-recognition! it seems that when I got carpal tunnel I became chained to Microsoft forever. Dragon only runs on Windows, and ViaVoice is not even a serious competitor -- accuracy is so bad that you get no wrist relief, and I can't imagine how you'd use it if you didn't have the use of your hands. Voice recognition is such a tough problem that startups don't want to touch it.

As I'm actually working in this industry I'll toss in my thoughts as well. Many of these present excellent products, but suffer from a lack of integration that has made products like Office so popular. Open Office, while a great alternative, doesn't have the same on-line collaborative properties as the web based solutions.

At the risk of going over the "self promotion" line, the company I work for has developed a set of on-line family organizational tools which are sort of integrated into a web portal. We're still spinning up and aren't quite prime time yet (unlike many of these other aspects) but we're approaching this problem with the concept of collaboration and integration in mind - which I think will be our contribution to the field.

If anyone is interested, you can toy with this stuff for free at www.cingo.com (left unlinked in an attempt to respect the honor code). We're still in an early phase and thus are taking live feedback on the site. This is a fairly tech-savy crowd, so your opinions would be most welcome.

Full disclosure: Yes, I do draw a paycheck from Cingo. No, I'm not being paid or compensated for my writing on Newsvine in any way. No, my boss has not asked, implied, hinted, or even suggested that I write this post.

This stuck me as topical. If I'm over the line I'm sure the author will delete my post.

You forgot Skype.

Can someone please explain to me why the world seems to be suddenly obsessed with browser-based applications. Tell me this: How, from an interface point of view, does opening a web browser to type a Word document make sense?

Excuses do not include:

• Cross-Platform - OpenOffice does this without being browser-based
• Having access to your documents from any machine - Firstly, anyone can accomplish this by keeping a documents folder on your home machine synchronized with an FTP server. Secondly, storing your documents exclusively online presents a major problem if the company goes out of business (as most of these "Web 2.0" companies are likely to do) or the server goes down.
• Being trendy - I suspect this is the main reason. Being trendy does not make you cool. Anyone who seriously considered answering my question with this reason needs to ask the next person they see to kick them in the groin. ;P

In all seriousness, I would like to hear the logic behind the sudden popularity of what seems to me to be a nonsensical merger of two seemingly-unrelated technologies.

Google calendar just came out, TODAY. Also, you are forgeting Gaim. Otherwise, great list.

Goowy.com has a beta IM client now. It has issues though, like when you remove an IM account (Yahoo, MSN, AOL), you still end up logging into that account every time. As if you didn't remove it. And when you logged off, sometimes you still remain logged in.

These kind of apps are definitely something to watch though. Since I started using Meebo, Goowy, and Writely, I haven't needed anything else.

Offline is still a problem. Many users of office applications are users on the go, and they don't always have access to the Internet. This is changing as WiFi becomes more prolific, but there are always going to be instances where you aren't connected.

This is where a fundamental shift in PC design has to take place. A month ago I posted on my blog what this future PC might look like. http://thepef.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/03/application_fut.html

Hey, thanks for the nice list. And people, use OpenOffice! : )

Two things:

1) Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com/)
2) Abiword (http://www.abisource.com/)

This is exactly what Bill Gates is worrying about.

@George Ingham: Is Abiword an "online"? I don't see a way of using it from a browser.

As a crazy person who hears voices and is perparing for the iminent dwarf invasion, I don't mind using Office (well, Word at least). For a typical school report, I go with Office. If I have something that I'd like some more creative formatting on, such as a project for my Design class, I use Pages for that. I haven't tried any of the online apps yet because I haven't really seen a need to. I had NeoOffice/J for about it week, and I really, really disliked it.

One thing I'd like to see in future versions of various offline, standalone office suites, or at least word processors, is support for HTML tags for formatting. I don't like the way Word handles lists and indentation, and perhaps as a result of my Newsvine addiction ("My name is Andrew, and I have a problem") I sometimes find myself starting to type blockquote in a Word document.

As a student (at a community college, no less) I don't yet have the need to be able to access my data anywhere at anytime, which is why I don't use any of these products or 37Boxes or Google Calendar. I figure if you're a busy, on-the-go professional and you find yourself without access to a computer, your own laptop, or your Palm, you're probably in jail or you've been kidnapped by South America rebels, or something equally bad in which that TPS report is the least of your worries :) Besides, if nothing else you can always opt for the low-tech approach of pen and paper, and type it up later. I think the paradigm is slowly starting to change, but bandwidth needs to become faster and more available, and devices need to become cheaper to be more ubiquitous.