Mar 14, 2008 | blog
It’s time has come, or passed rather… at least for me. I’m sure I’ll cross paths with my favorite email client and PIM in the future. I’ll either have a change of heart (unlikely) or a future client will insist that I use it for internal email at their location (very likely).
For all those anti-Microsoft folks that love to hear things like this, I simply have to say that it has little to do with the product. It does have everything to do with the way I work. As I transition much of my work online, I’m finding that I use more than one or two computers. Since it’s much harder to sync all the data on all these machines, and the fact that I simply can’t do this on some, leads me to world of cloud computing.
This is nothing new for me, I’ve been an advocate of leveraging the cloud for years, but it’s the first concerted effort to simply migrate my data and shift my app usage online. Yes this includes office productivity solutions as well. I’ll be using a lot of both Google Apps and Zoho Office. Both have their strong points and I’m aiming to leverage both for different reasons.
I’ve got most of my data on either XDrive or SkyDrive for differing reasons, and use Box.net as well for some always accessible drivers, tables, code snippets, and such.
I’ll keep MS Office Pro installed, but it’s use is limited to supporting my clients – nothing more. So join me, if you wish, and see how well this works out! I’ll share my frustrations and my wins equally with you.
Have you been thinking of doing the same? What are your directions on how you work, looking into the future?
Dec 18, 2007 | blog
Hey there, ho there – with the current mini-meme of online office app’s getting a bit more attention, I thought I’d give ’em another go. That is, I have used all the major ones in the past year and a half, but have mostly come back to Microsoft Office.
Of course, I truly need MS Office Pro – my clients need documents in Word, drawings in Visio, sheets in Excel, projects in Project, you get the point. So I can’t get rid of Office anytime soon.
However, I can move my needs to the web. This is nothing new as I’ve done this before, and will continue to look at both online & offline solutions for the tasks at hand. What’s interesting is that, most of my existing data is already online. Either in Zoho or Google Docs, I’ve already migrated my “old” data to either one of these services.
Now, some of these posts today talk about the numbers of users, and how these must be an example of the lack of interest by the user community. While it may be true in many instances, my belief is that the applications are just now becoming really comparable to desktop-based solutions. I do think that there is a big future for online app’s, and as more tools like Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight are incorporated, there is very little limit to the things that can be done as a service.
The pieces are already in place, I’m switching back to online app’s instead of Office for my personal use. With the advent of things like Zoho Notebook – even my need of Microsoft OneNote can be addressed.
How about you? Do you use online app’s on a regular basis, just dabble, or avoid these like the plague?
Other people talking about online office app’s & suites today:
Mar 7, 2007 | blog
Zoho Writer is now integrated with EchoSign. This kind of cooperation and partnering is what breads great products. The enhancements just updated on Zoho Writer entice me to use the product more than Google Writer for example.
Also updated/added is support for Box.net, another online service I use, and blogging tweaks to make posting from ZW easier.
Via: Zoho Blogs – Zoho partners with EchoSign & more
Technorati tags: Zoho Writer, EchoSign
Nov 30, 2006 | blog
Wow, great news for those of you who have embraced the modern world of online applications and document storage!
Zoho has interoperability with Microsoft Office via a downloadable plugin that allows Office users to save Word & Excel documents directly to their Zoho account. This functionality helps blur the line between remotely hosted and local applications.
“People are asking for this,†Vegesna said. “Currently they have to go to Zoho.com, login, and upload documents. We have them doing this an average of five times per day. This will let them go straight to Zoho without having to go to Zoho.com, upload, etc.â€
Zoho is also opening its API’s so that online storage providers could tap into the Zoho engine and provide more seamless integration of storage options.
I’ve been using Zoho (and Google Docs & Spreadsheets) for most of 2006. There are definite differences between the offerings, but Zoho has made the most progress towards an integrated feature-rich office suite. By offering the ability to upload/download documents directly to your Zoho account – their product becomes even more useful and productive.
This new feature is compatible with Office 2000, 2003, and 2007 by the way.
Via: TechCrunch – The Real Office Live: Zoho Bridges Online And Offline Office App’s
