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 The online office has been touted as the next big thing for years now but has still to take off in a bigway. This can mostly be put down to the requirement for a high speed Internet connection, a lackof functionality in online applications, perhaps most importantly, the grip that Microsoft Office hason the business world. There is a lack of marketing as well. Unless you are a regular reader oftechnology news and blogs, there is no real way of knowing that a world of wonderful and freetools exist out there on the internet. So what exactly is an online office suite, and what use are theyif any?

Instead of starting up your copy of Microsoft Word, or Excel, you would go to a website, log in, andhave access to an online word processor, spreadsheet, or powerpoint-like tool. The documentsyou've saved will be listed in your login area, and you can choose to leave them there, or exportthem to your computer in a variety of formats. You can also import documents from your computerto your online office to work on them there.

Most online office suites offer you the ability to invite people to share your files, to view them,review them or to co-author them. The files are stored online, so the changes are made in real time.You don't need to email files around. There is usually a history of changes, so you can review whohas made what changes, and undo these changes if necessary. All in all, as far as collaborationgoes, online office applications have a lot to offer over traditional desktop-based software.

Key to efficient team working is compatibility. No software is needed, no particular operatingsystem or even web browser is essential. Anyone can log into the online document and see exactlywhat everyone else sees. This is the kind of uniformity of experience that requires businesses topurchase expensive upgrades to their software every couple of years. Even if a user likes to draftthings in their own particular word processor on their computer, a good online office suite willallow you to export it and share it online with others.

Other benefits include document safety. There's no need to backup your files, in case yourcomputer goes a bit funny and you lose all your documents. The companies that host onlineapplications have a lot of duplicate servers, emergency facilities and documents are backed upautomatically overnight usually, if not more often.

Moving your documents online can free you up personally as well. How often do you need accessto that vital file, only to discover you didn't copy it to your usb drive, or burn it to CD, or email it toyour home address? Online Offices are always there, accessible from any internet connectedcomputer, regardless of what operating system or software they have installed on them.

Obviously this all sounds marvellous, so whats the catch?

Well, the obvious flaw here is that an online office application is stored online. What happens whenthe internet is unavailable - the server goes down or your ISP has a fault? Nobody has access totheir documents? This did used to be the case, and has been the downside of online apps, butrecently both Google Docs and Zoho have rolled out offline access which utilises synchronisationtechnology. What this means is that you documents will automatically be saved to your computerwhen you're online. If you want to edit your documents when offline, you can do so, and whenyou're online again, the newer versions on your computer will be uploaded. Thinkfree Office hashad offline capability since last year also, so the main three suites have all dealt with the accessissue; although, being realistic, how often are any of us far from a wireless internet connectionthese days?

Thinkfree

Reviewed by: CVC Circuit Riders     Date: May 2008  

Address: www.thinkfree.com/
Ease of use: 3 out of 5
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

 ThinkFree has three main components -- Write (a word processor), Calc (a spreadsheet), and Show (presentation software) -- all of which are listed on the site's My Office page, along with your most recently edited files. If you're concerned about document compatibility with Microsoft Office, never fear, Office 2007 documents open fine in Thinkfree. Along with 1gb free storage and its attractive looks, Thinkfree seems to be a genuine contender for a free replacement for Microsoft Office.

Thinkfree Workspace is a group collaboration area, where you can track a project, create issues and comment on other peoples issues, raise tasks, and attach files. It is currently in beta, and allows 3 free projects, 100mb of file storage per project. You can invite people via email from Workspace, new tasks and issues can be emailed to users. The addition of Workspace makes Thinkfree a far more attractive option as a coherent suite of group applications.

Coming soon is Note, a new WYSIWYG tool to create web pages, export to blogs, and other online interaction.

All in all, Thinkfree is very impressive. Along with the online version, you can download the software to run on your desktop. It looks a lot like its MS Office counterparts. The problem? It is slow. Very slow. I had real problems using the online version to do anything because everything I tried held up my computer for a minute or so. This kind of inability to access documents quickly, save documents, switch between documents is exactly why people do not want to switch to online applications. I couldn't cope with the delays and I doubt many people used to MS Office would do either. A shame, because the features and looks are good, but productivity is what counts at the end of the day and unless Thinkfree can solve the speed issue, I can't see many people making the move, even if it is free.

Zoho

Reviewed by: CVC Circuit Riders     Date: May 2008  

Address: www.zoho.com
Ease of use: 3 out of 5
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

The amount of applications available from Zoho Office is a little overwhelming, and can beconfusing, but most people will be interested in the features that replace their Office software, andthese are Zoho Writer (the word processor) Zoho Sheet (spreadsheets) and Zoho Show(slideshows). The full list of tools is listed below the article.

There is 1GB of storage for free, which is a whole lot of documents - more than you'll ever needprobably. ). There is also an offline mode so you can work on your documents without beingconnected to the Internet. When you do go online Writer will update your documents with anychanges you've made. This feature requires you to download and install Google Gears, an opensource application created by Google that Zoho have used to implement this offline editing.The main office utilities are extremely compatible with Microsoft Office, and do most of what youcould do in MS Office. Some of the more advanced features are not available, and Zoho Show, thePowerpoint alternative is lacking a few features, but overall, if you're a regular user of Ms Office,Zoho could quite easily replace it with little effort.

Being an online office suite, collaboration is central, and Zoho does this well. Each document canbe shared whilst editing by clicking Share, and entering an email address. Your team member willthen get the email inviting them to collaborate on that document. They will be able to view thedocument without signing up, but in order to edit will have to join Zoho. Other sharing methodsinclude creating a group, inviting people to join your group and then sharing documents with yourgroup. Shared documents are readable or editable by your team, but only the author can sharedocuments with people, review version history and revert back to an earlier version, export to acomputer, email or publish to the web, which avoids version conflicts.

A useful features of this suite include notifiers in Writer when a team member is logged in. Just clicktheir name and you open up a chat window so you can chat and share information whilst you workon a document.

The full list of Zoho's free tools:

• Zoho Writer - Online word processor
• Zoho Sheet - Online spreadsheet service
• Zoho Show - Online presentation tool
• Zoho DB - Online Database & Reporting
• Zoho Meeting - Web Conferencing
• Zoho Notebook - Online Note Taker
• Zoho Planner - Online organizing tool
• Zoho Wiki - Online Wiki with public, private & group permissions
• Zoho Chat - Instant messaging and group chat tool
• Zoho Project- Free plan limits you to 1 project at a time
• Zoho Invoice - Limited to 5 invoices per month on free plan
• Zoho Creator - Online web applications creator (2 Users Free)
• Zoho CRM - On-Demand CRM Solution (3 Users Free)

Google Apps

Reviewed by: CVC Circuit Riders     Date: May 2008  

Address: www.google.com/a
Ease of use: 4 out of 5
Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Google has a number of office applications available for free, along with premium versions of Google Apps, which allow you to use your own domain name to host all the google applications and integrate everything within your organisations central admin panel on Google.

The process involved in integrating Google Apps with a domain may be a little too confusing for most IT novices, so a tech-savvy person in your organisation is probably essential to go for the full version of Google Apps. The collaboration tools available do make it worthwhile if this is an option though, as you can utilise Google Mail for you entire organisation on your domain name, replacing the need for expensive web hosting and email services. See www.google.com/a for more in-depth information.

If you want to keep your own email solution and not worry about the domain name administration, you can also try out Google Apps using the Team Edition, which is completely free and each user can sign up individually using their work or organisation email address. Google will automatically recognise team members if their email address is at the same domain as another team member.

Take a look at www.google.com/apps for more information and a handy video that explains it all.

Team Edition Consists of:

• Start Page – Preview your calendar and docs, add gadgets and search the web from one place.
• Mail - Email with over 6 GB of storage per account, mail search tools and the ability to receive other
  email accounts in your inbox.
• Docs - Create and share word processing, spreadsheets and powerpoint presentation.
• Calendar - for group planning, meetings , appointments and publishing event information.
• Talk - for online chat between group members
• Google Sites – one-stop sharing for all types of team information

Acrobat.com

Reviewed by: CVC Circuit Riders     Date: May 2008  

Address: www.acrobat.com
Ease of use: 4 out of 5
Overall rating: 3 out of 5 

 The entry point to Adobe's new suite of online services. Available now as a public beta, from here you can utilize the Adobe web office tools all from one cohesive and integrated suite that allows for access from any PC and online collaboration.

At Acrobat.com, you have access to the following web office tools:  Buzzword, ConnectNow, Share, My Files, and Create PDF. No doubt Adobe plan to expand the offerings to compete with Google, Zoho and Thinkfree.

Buzzword is the Adobe version of the word processor. Fitting with the styling of all Adobes online tools, Buzzword is sleek and elegant. Whereas other online office providers aim seems to be to simulate desktop software on the web, Adobe's vision would seem to be built specifically for the web with online collaboration in mind. Buzzword uses Flash to provide the crisp clear user interface and a true WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) experience. Whether your Buzzword document is on a large screen or small screen or on a printed page, what you see on the screen - fonts, letter spacing, colors, and graphics - are all reproduced perfectly.

Buzzwords'  online collaboration is implemented in a differerent way. Instead of names in a sidebar like in Google Docs, a documents collaborators are always displayed at the bottom of a document along with their current status - reading, editing- as well as the date and time of the last version they viewed.

Collaborators can be given roles like editor, reviewer, co-author, and reader and depending on those access levels, they can either write, edit, or comment in the file. The comments are highly visible and color-coded by user which makes it easy to see what's being said and by who.

The different versions of a document are also easily accessible from the bottom of the screen. You can slide your mouse pointer along a timeline of the different versions. If a colleague has made a terrible mess of your lovely document, you can easily undo all the changes they've made by sliding back through the documents history.

ConnectNow, is online whiteboarding and web conferencing too allowing  live meetings over the web offering screen sharing, chat, whiteboards, internet telephony, and video conferencing. Like the other products, ConnectNow doesn't clutter the screen with the many features is offers, so some exploration is necessary to work out where everything is, but once you know, it makes things tidier and cleaner to look at. When i tested it things were a little buggy, and difficult to connect, but as it was the same day Adobe launched the Beta version, no doubt their servers were a little busy. How well ConnectNow can compete with applications like Skype for free videoconferencing remains to be seen.

Participants can be assigned roles which can be changed at any time during the meeting. These roles provide for their ability to share their screens with other members and make notes. Currently, only three people can use the service simultaneously, which limits its ability to offer a true alternative to a business's current web conferencing solution.

Adobe Share is a tool that allows you to share files with others. Instead of emailing large files, you can share your file from this app and still maintain control of the document. You approve the recipient list and what access they have to the file. A document previewer built into Acrobat.com also lets you launch and view PDF and image files right in your browser instead of having to launch the original application.  Share embeds aren't limited to one particular type of file, but support many major formats, even video.

My Files is a document organizer and storage space which helps you locate documents quickly. You can browse by author, file type, alphabetical order, date created, last updated, or a combination of multiple filters. With 5 GB available for use, you have space enough to store a healthy collection of files. I suspect as Adobe adds to it's online offerings My Files will become the central dashboard for all your tools and documents, akin to My Documents on Windows.

What makes this online office suite even better is that Adobe is also making it available via an AIR application. The app comes bundled with the new version of Adobe Reader and lets you work with your Acrobat.com files outside of a web browser. Unfortunately, the application requires you to be online, despite AIR's support for offline sync. However, offline access is on the product roadmap in the future.

The Verdict

Despite Google's dominance in the internet world and expertise in developing online applications, only Google Calendar really impresses. The other applications, although functional, seem clunky and tired. Thinkfree looks great,but is limited in scope and has speed issues. Adobe has some great individual applications and if you don't need an integrated full office suite I would recommend Buzzword for online word processing. It falls short on providing everything a team needs to collaborate, but no doubt it won't be too long before Adobe catches up and I suspect overtakes their rivals. Functionality is one thing, but what really wins people over is clarity and visual appeal.

Overall, Zoho would seem to have the most comprehensive suite of tools, and with so much available for free, is hard to beat. As with anything, personal taste and your groups requirements make a big difference, so it's well worth taking some time to try out the features of all the suites and choosing the one that suits you best.

M.D.Armitage