Comments on: Could You Live in a Microsoft Office-less World?

By: Paul Kincaid-Smith

Paul Kincaid-Smith — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:26:19 +0000

When I taught my class at DU this Fall, I decided to experiment with Google Docs and Zoho instead of using Microsoft Office. For simple work, both were fine. Had formatting inconsistencies when moving a doc from one tool to another.

I discovered a very useful feature of Google Docs: I can easily publish a web form URL which let’s users fill out a row of a spreadsheet. Great for collecting info from a lot of people and consolidating it automatically. My students used this for a project which displayed the users’ input data on a Google Map. Examples: find a lost pet, find Haunted Houses around Denver, find libraries with free wi-fi, locate Denver’s most dangerous intersections, etc. I love the collaborative possibilities.

At #defragcon, I saw Microsoft promote MS Office Docs integration for Facebook. Could this be a defensive move to popularize Office with the upcoming generation of kids who haven’t been habituated to Office yet?

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:46:02 +0000

@Tim: the reason Google stopped supporting Google Gears is because they’re putting more focus and effort into Google Chrome’s HTML5 abilities, particularly more access to the OS via HTML5 file abilities. here’s another article discussing this very thing here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_dumps_gears_for_html5.php

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:40:36 +0000

You mentioned offline access…

Google used to allow you to access your Google Docs info while offline using Google Gears. Great for people who travel, but for some reason Google disabled that ability in May. They mentioned it will be back at some point (http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176376), hopefully it comes back soon.

Good luck in your search…if you find that ‘one size fits all’ solution please let us know!

By: wendeeoh

wendeeoh — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:22:41 +0000

Thanks for your comment Tim! I think this is the sticking point people will have. We need a ubiquitious solution so we can communicate with one another when not working at the same corporate environment — and maybe even when we aren’t online – like on an airplane! Its bad enough converting .doc to .docx files. I’m going to look more closely at Google docs and Open office. Best luck to you.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:28:55 +0000

I’ve been trying to break up with MS for a while now. For the year or so that I was running Linux I tried to get by with a combination of OpenOffice and Google Docs. I moved to a Mac about 6 weeks ago and now rely on iWork and Google Docs. Those two take care of just about all my needs, but every once in a while I come across a doc (usually a complex spreadsheet) that just doesn’t render in a readable format…for those I use the free web-based version of Office 2010. Not ideal, but it works.