#4 Online Applications ie Zoho Writer

For this exercise I played around with Zoho Writer and Google Docs. I found Zoho Writer to be very fiddly and hard to use. It also wouldn't let me save. I tried it on both Windows XP and Ubutnu (I have both installed on my home computer). It worked even worse on Ubutnu than it did on Windows XP, but given that not many libraries use Ubutnu, I guess that is a moot point.

Google Docs was a little better. I didn't like having to use the same Google account, as I could see how Google was quickly collecting a whole lot of information on me. I didn't like the idea of my professional blog being linked to my web searching habits, and my documents. I can see all sorts of potential problems. I also find it annoying having a lot of different web accounts, so I'm not sure what a good compromise would be.

The biggest problem with online word processors is the lack of integration with Microsoft Office. Often formatting is lost, or changes are made. Since a lot of our users are using document creators to work on resumes and other professional documentation, I can see this being a worry.

I much prefer using OpenOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office. It's very easy to use and is free. You can download it to your computer. It works on a variety of platforms. It doesn't convert precisely to MS Office applications, which is quite annoying. As I don't have Microsoft Office on this computer (it came with Windows Vista, which I disliked), I have to convert documents in Microsoft Word at work in my lunchtime.