Go to work on the web

For many of us, using Microsoft Office has become something of a way of life.

Some PCs come with it already installed, it’s the first program on nearly every vendor’s price list, and it’s the one thing – at least Word is – that nearly everyone knows how to use.

But firing up Office isn’t necessarily the only way to write letters, manage a budget, take notes, keep appointments, create presentations or store records.

There are alternatives that live on the web, share many of Office’s features and are completely free. Welcome to what we like to call the out-of-Office experience.

Instead of being stored on the hard disk of the PC, the programs we’re going to describe are stored on large computers run by internet companies such as Google. Just sign up – it’s nearly always free – and then sign in by choosing a username and password, select the program you want to run and you’re ready to go. Anything that’s created is saved on the remote computer and can be accessed from any PC with an internet connection.

Jump straight in
The easiest way to get a feel for this is to jump straight in. Start your favourite web browser and go to www.zoho.com, and when the page loads, find the Try Now link under Zoho Writer and click on it. We’d normally sign up at the next screen, but it’s also possible to click the Quick Create link and Zoho Writer will load a blank document.

Look along the button bar and there are many of the same kinds of functions that should be familiar from using programs such as Word, designed for editing, formatting, saving and printing documents. Experiment for a bit and try some of the functions.

Running Office-style programs such as Zoho Writer that are stored on a web server rather than on a PC’s hard disk has a number of advantages. First, it’s no longer a problem if a particular PC doesn’t have the correct version of the office program you need. Second, because everything’s web-based, it’s possible to use an older, less powerful PC. Third, there’s no need to buy an upgrade because you’re always using the latest version, and as new features are added, everyone who has signed up has access to them by default.

Finally, because it’s web-based, it breaks out of the same old groove of Microsoft operating systems and software – you can use a Mac or a Linux operating system, such as Ubuntu, which is popular enough for Dell to be planning to ship it on some home PCs. It means you have the flexibility to start working on a document using a new Vista-compatible PC at work or college and then finish it off on an old machine at home that’s still running Windows XP.

What’s available?
So what kind of programs are available? Pretty much any office-style program, so expect to find calendars, word processors, email, presentation programs, to-do lists, notepads, spreadsheets and databases; after that, there are all sorts of weird and wonderful goodies, mainly to do with creating blog-like websites or sharing information with other people. Indeed, the out-of-Office experience is very big on collaboration, which is another reason Microsoft is getting so twitchy about it.

Given that most of the programs here have been around for a while, it’s surprising how many of them are still flagged by their inventors as being beta products – so they’re not quite finished yet.

Still, at least that means they’re nearly all free, and certainly the ones we mention here have versions that don’t cost anything. Most beta products are safe to use, although it’s always worth investigating the forums where users post questions and answers to see at a glance if there are any overriding problems.

As in the world of conventional software, it’s possible to cherry pick the best of each program group, or to go for integration and pick a website that of fers a suite of programs that between them do almost everything. Of the latter, Google’s offerings (docs.google.com) are now well established, and anyone with a Google account can access them straight away.