Microsoft Word vs Google Docs - Comments Page 2

open office is the way to go and it office a LOT
it can do everything microsoft office can

I'd recommend LibreOffice, too. As a former MS Office user, I haven't found anything MS Office did that LibreOffice can't do just as well. Plus, the price is right.

As a well-satisfied Google docs user, having spent 8 years in Bangladesh and now 2 in Vietnam , I can tell you that a 1st-world environment is not a necessity. The bandwidth requirements are actually quite light. The main difficulty can be a reliable electric supply, but that is a problem for both platforms.
I'm a teacher and the sharing features allow collaboration among students that is difficult to achieve with a file-based word processor.

Google always concerns me as being very nosey. What are the privacy implications? Would I be right in assuming that Google will look at my docs and adding data extracted (even anonymously) to its vast banks of information?

For fast, powerful and full-featured word processing, spreadsheet operations and presentation graphics, LibreOffice will make you wonder why you did not use this free productivity suite sooner. LibreOffice also includes a database, math program and vector drawing application, so there is simply no reason to pay Microsoft rates for most office operations.

Both LibreOffice and OpenOffice once used essentially the same codebase, but an essential difference has developed. When $28 billionaire Larry Ellison (Oracle Corporation) bought Sun, he claimed he owned Sun-contributed open code and ignored the open source community development process.

In response, the open source community simply renamed its community codebase LibreOffice, and continued the same steady path toward excellence. LibreOffice works on Windows, Mac OS-X and Linux (RH and Debian versions). Current version (final) 3.4.5 (www.libreoffice.org/download)

In addition to OPenOffice and LibreOffice, there are other free word processors of varying complexity, depending on your needs. Jarte, AbiWord and others. See Gizmo's reviews and recommendations at

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/word-processor-replacement.htm

Gmail is one of the best things Google has offered for free, but when it comes to Google Docs, I will pass. The company I work for uses it for everything, but as someone else has mentioned, it loses it's "flair" when it comes to creating a presentation style document. That and others in the company who are not of the "learned" can really screw up a shared document. If I had to go with a document maker that is free, I would go with OpenOffice for sure. Google Docs looks like something an elementary student can learn on and then move up later on.

Open Office has everything MS Office has plus when you copy you don't need to hit the 'enter' key, it doesn't double up the msg whatever. Just carry on no problem.
I find it better and also has other apps too.
Can't beat free, free, free.

If you just start using your first document and you like GoogleDoc as your favorite fanclub, just do it. The actual problem in the world of wordprocessing ( and of course, other office software) is the compatibility. If you create your document with normal text, that's fine. But, you have your own style or proposed by the software, then, when it looks good or smart on one software, it will probabaly not do on the others.

The biggest problem with online word processors is that they're...ONLINE.

Want to edit a document while on the go? Better have a real office suite (openoffice, libreoffice, MS Office)on your machine.

Network or internet down? time for that coffee break I guess...deadline or no deadline.

That plus the fact that I don't trust MS or Google (or anybody else) not to read my documents means that I won't be giving up my local word processors and spreadsheets any time soon.

Just my two cents.
Bryan

The whole thing is reliant on the Web being available and usable. Nothing can beat having your documents locally. I only have one document floating in the clouds, my resume. If anyone needs (or I want to give) my resume to, I can do so from my phone. Other than that, I would never want to be hostage to the Internet. Remember, absolutely never forget, every connection is "best effort" and no one can guarantee availability. Sure, you can say that your own computer can give up the ghost, you still should have backups. I upgraded my hard disk to a solid state disk and although it took some time, and since I use a Mac, I have Time Machine and was able to restore everything, chose all the files and in 3 hours, I had everything back. For my Windows machines, there is a similar product, so every machine in our house has a Time Machine like backup application. Nothing is better than automatic backups. For Word, the best free option is Open Office. You should still use Google Docs if you need to share and need collaboration, but that should be just for certain selected documents.

just yesterday only i tried using the googledocs instead of mso 2010 on the firefox browser v.9 [for transliteration purpose ]; i can't use the right--click option nor can i change the font size ; an error message that the clipboard functionality is not enabled in the browser appears ; i had to use the 'edit' button on the browser menu every time .

I have found Google Docs for collaboration purposes to be woefully lacking.

I have a group of people that I want anyone in the group to create a document from a template and edit it.

- The template should be visible on the Group screen

- Members should be notified when a new document is created in the group

- Members should be notified when a document is modified unless the person who modified it manually opts to not send a notification for that update

I decided to try to pull this off using Google products as I'm trying not to fragment my application services across multiple providers. What I seem to be finding is that although Google has IMMENSE resources at their disposal, the integration of Groups and Docs appears to be woefully lacking in features. This may force me to go evaluate Microsoft's offerings.

So far I've discovered:

- Each individual has to manually turn on notifications for each document

- Modification notifications appear to only be available for spreadsheets. Doc it appears you can only be notified regarding new COMMENTS, not doc modifications?

- It appears there is no way to share a template. I suppose the work around is to name a document filename_template.doc and then use the File, Make a Copy function

- There appears to be no way to organize documents from a group page view. They can only be organized from an individual account view. (Example, the Group's page has a Docs listing, and there can be sub-folders under that)

Have I overlooked a bunch of features? Is there a different Google App I should be using? Or is this just apparently the sad state of things right now?

I have years of saved Microsoft office excel and word docs. Is there a free word processing app that I can transfer all my Microsoft docs to--easily??

Please help me-I don't want to pay exorbitant MS office rates and am not computer savvy; need an easy transfer.
Thanks,
Marsha