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Back to
original article

Comparing web office products

Basic

By Lasa Information Systems Team

Miles Maier takes a look at how the various tools you might
use to start your own ‘web office’ compare.

In part
one of this article, we looked at getting started with using online
tools to carry out everyday tasks such as email, calendar and
contacts.  We looked at what online tools are, the pros and cons, and
how using these tools can help you to collaborate, share and publish work
with colleagues

In part two, we now look at comparing the various tools you might use
to start your own ‘web office’

DISCLAIMER: The opinions in this article are solely
those of the London Regional
Champion.  We do not advocate any one web service tool over
another and this article is purely intended as a guide to help you begin
your own experiments with online tools.

Email:

Breaking the habit of using Outlook for email can be difficult.
However, Google’s Gmail service offers lots of functionality and
integrates well with other Google services, such as Google Calendar, Maps,
and Mobile, and it’s easy to forward emails from an Outlook account to
GMail.

View larger Google mail image (opens in new window)

Advantages: No doubt about it - Google’s free Gmail service
offers the best combination of features, functionality, integration and
storage to be found in an online mail service. With 2GB of storage, Google
integrates tightly with its other offerings - Google Calendar, Mobile and
Maps. The launch of Google's free Mail
Fetcher  (see below) also allows users to bring mail from
external email accounts (like Yahoo!) into their Gmail (which Yahoo! and
Microsoft currently charge for as a premium service).

View larger Google Fetcher image (opens in new window)

Basic integration with Outlook email was fairly easy with the creation
of a simple rule in Outlook to forward my mail to GMail.  However,
you should always check with your IT administrator as many organisations
consider the redirecting of company mail onto third party servers to be
breach of security.

We've also heard
on the grapevine that many businesses are seriously considering taking
up Google's Premium Apps service.

Disadvantages: Apart from the usual caveats about
security and data back-up of hosting your precious data with a third party
provider in a different legal jurisdiction from the UK, GMail's major
weakness is the lack of functionality -
many will be tempted to use an
alternative service like Plaxo.

See: Google Mail

Calendar:

Google Calendar is a fully
featured web calendar that integrates well with other Google services,
such as GMail and Google Maps.

View larger Google Calendar image (opens in new
window)

Advantages: Using Google Calendar you can create and
share multiple calendars and set up reminders and auto responders – this
is useful if you need to co-ordinate a small team of workers who either
work from home or spend most of their time doing outreach work.

A Microsoft Outlook calendar can be imported into Google as a CSV file
and SyncMyCal can be used to synchronise
appointments between Google and Outlook.  For Mac users, SpanningSync will
synchronise between Google Calendar and Apple’s iCal.

See: Google Calendar

Address Book/Contacts:

Plaxo is a popular web based address book
with a large number of other users, an important factor in choosing any
online tool if you plan to use it long-term.

View larger Plaxo image (opens in new window)

Advantages:  Plaxo strength is its integration
with Outlook.offers better functionality than the contact management in
Google’s Gmail.  You can download a free toolbar from Plaxo which
will automatically synchronise with Outlook contacts, notes and
tasks.  Premium versions of Plaxo will also synchronise contacts with
your mobile phone or PDA.

Disadvantages:  Plaxo’s major weakness is that it
whilst it offers the best contact management, it doesn’t yet offer support
for email, documents or spreadsheets.  We expect Plaxo to fix this in
the near future by partnering with an email service provider.

See:  Plaxo

Word processing and spreadsheets:

ThinkFree Online Edition:

During testing, ThinkFree Online Edition emerged as
my current choice of word processor and spreadsheet tool because of its
focus on delivering a tightly integrated set of word processing and
spreadsheet tools.

View larger Thinkfree image (opens in new window)

Advantages: ThinkFree Online edition delivers the
fastest editing speeds of the three tools tested in this section.  It
handles large and complex documents and can work whilst you’re not on the
Internet - important if you need to work in areas without an Internet
connection. It also has a familiar user interface that borrows heavily
from Word and Excel.

View larger Thinkfree editor image (opens in new window)

ThinkFree also boasts a doc exchange area where users can upload and
share their files – typically templates and other useful files.

View larger Thinkfree document image (opens in new
window)

Disadvantages:  On the downsideThinkFree appears
to be the only one not to currently support Open Office file formats (opd,
ops, sxw).  Another slight downside is ThinkFree’s lack of
integration with email, calendar and address book services to form a
complete office suite under one banner. However, ThinkFree does seem to be
looking at this and we could well see these missing services emerge in
ThinkFree during the near future.

See: Thinkfree

Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet:

If I had to choose a provider for an integrated suite of productivity
tools, it would be Zoho.  Zoho offers a rapidly
expanding suite of free and paid for online office tools such as a web
notebook, wiki, polls, project manager, customer relationship management
(CRM), and database tools.

View larger Zoho image (opens in new window)

For our web office, Zoho Writer and Sheet is a well supported
free online word processor and spreadsheet service.

Advantages:  It has a clean, simple interface
familiar to users of Word and Excel. Zoho also offers the ability to share
and publish documents, and can import and export to a wide range of file
formats, including Open Office. Zoho also offers offline working via a
plug-in for Microsoft Office.

View larger Zoho document image (opens in new
window)

As with ThinkFree, you can also post directly from Zoho to your blog of
choice. Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet also gives you extra storage capacity
by integrating with online storage company Box.net, which offers 1GB of free storage.

Disadvantages:  On the downside, many users have
noted that whilst it accurately displays simple Word documents imported
into Zoho Writer, it tends to slow down and struggle with more complex
documents, such as the 47 page ICT Strategy I’m currently writing. In
fairness to Zoho, the company acknowledges this and is working on
improving its speed.

Future developments:  As a sign of things to
come, Zoho will also be partnering with EchoSign - which will
allow users to send and receive digitally signed invoices and receipts, a
small step towards enabling e-commerce into your ‘web office’.  Zoho
has also been trialling a web office portal that will bring email,
calendar, contacts, documents and spreadsheets under one roof.

View larger Zoho Virtual Office image (opens in new
window)

See: Zoho

Google Docs & Spreadsheets:

If it’s integration with email, calendar and contacts you’re after - Google Docs & Spreadsheets is the
one.

View larger Google Share documents image (opens in new
window)

Advantages: Whilst this service has rather basic
document formatting options, it makes collaboration and sharing easy
through integration with GMail. This probably the choice to make if you
want to collborate on rough drafts or outlines without worrying about a
polished final look. Google Docs & Spreadheets also supports a wide
range of file formats, including Word and Open Office

View larger Google document image (opens in new
window)

Disadvantages:  However, Google Docs and
Spreadsheets has the most basic word processing and spreadsheet functions
and the lowest file size capacity of the ‘free’ services reviewed - and is
probably not the choice to make if you want to collaborate on large,
complex business documents.

See: Google documents

Accessibility

At present none of the Web Office Products offer accessibility options.
This is something that needs to be developed if these tools are ever to
truly replace traditional Office products.

What’s next for the web office?

One thing that’s clearly missing from all three services is that staple
of office life - the mail-merge of text documents and address book
contacts to create letters and labels. This may well change in the near
future as all three services look to offer an integrated package of
calendar, email, and contacts along with document and spreadsheet editors.

Remember with all these tools, sustainability is a big issue – what
happens to your documents and data if the company is no longer around?
Make sure you pick a tool from a company that’s likely to stay the course.
And make sure you keep a backup of your documents somewhere
else.

Download our Web
Office Tools comparison chart (PDF Document 39Kb).

About the author

Lasa Information Systems
Team
Lasa
Information Systems Team provides a range of services to
community and voluntary organisations including ICT Health Checks and
consulting on the best application of technology in your organisation.
Lasa IST is responsible for maintaining the ICT Hub
Knowledgebase.

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