Online Office Tools: something for you?
When you think about it, online office tools can be very helpful to many of us. For example, frequent travelers, people who take office work home, etc.
Last week, I visited zoho.com and found that their proposal has real potential. If you sign in to the web site, you can use a set of online office tools, including Zoho Writer (word processing) and Zoho Sheet (a spreadsheet tool).
I am interested in this site because I use some of my documents on different locations. Up to now, my solution was to send those documents to my web e-mail address and download them where I need them. With Zoho Writer, it would have been much easier to access the document from anywhere: I would simply have to log into my Zoho.com account.
Zoho Writer provides you with a set of standard word processor features. You have close to 20 fonts available. You can save your document on their server, import a Microsoft Word document without problems or work offline on a limited number of documents.
This being said, I am concerned by the following points when it comes to working online. First, how secure are my documents when I save them on a third party server? Second, what about performance, particularly that of Zoho Sheet? I doubt that this application can process a large sheet as a normal spreadsheet application will do. That being said, Zoho office tools are worth a try.
Stumble it!
Christian,
I discovered Zoho sometime ago, while they were in early beta. My team and I tested it back then and decided to go for Google Apps (www.google.com/a/) and Webex for web conferencing instead of Zoho meetings. However, I have to admit that I’m quite impressed by what Zoho has accomplished in a year and the partners they signed up.
Like you I work from multiple locations, so universal access to my applications and data has become a necessity, not counting the hassle of going through airport security and the risk of loss.
The issues of performance and confidentiality that you raised are legitimate concerns. They were factors in my choosing Google, but also Google prevailed due to their full integration of many powerful tools for online businesses (adwords, google analytics, etc)
Both services are useful. I think potential users should compare the features of each one and choose the one that is most suitable for their needs.
Hi, my name is Christy and I am currently an intern at a small business intelligence company, LogiXML, working in their Software as a Service division, LogiOnDemand.
My reason for emailing is that I’m curious of your impressions on a new product we are readying for launch. Thought you might be interested as our free software is based on excel data, and is very beneficial for many users, one of them being bloggers. If you have the opportunity, I’d greatly appreciate it if you took a look . The website is http://www.widgenie.com/. Feel free to register for a free account. If you like the site, we’d love it if you mentioned it in your blog or site!
Thanks so much,
Christy