Delete comment from: Google Operating System
> Google Docs or Zoho will never
> be as fast, as powerful or as
> easy to use as Microsoft Office
> or OpenOffice, but their
> other strengths could convince
> some people to use them.
Hmm, not sure about that. Google Docs Writely is easier to use than Word already, but that's because it has much less features -- so that's hard to compare.
As for the speed, I just opened up an outline of a book in Word, which took around 3 seconds. Opening a similar outline in Google Docs Writely took around 6 seconds. That's twice as long but I don't see why that speed might not be optimized in the future.
As far as power goes: right now, Google Docs is much less powerful than Word for most needs (the non-collaboration/ sharing/ publication needs). But never say never.
As far as what will go obsolete, I think it really depends on the user base. There will be companies using Microsoft products for many years to come. Once Google Docs is equal -- which might take years, if ever -- it's still a management decision whether or not to use it. But for casual home users the picture is very different; this target group has much less reason to stick to the more costly MS Office solution, and they might switch to Google Office much quicker.
Already, Google's Excel (Google Spreadsheets) has all I need from Excel, simply because I don't need much. Excel power users on the other hand might see an immense lack of features when switching...
Aug 16, 2007, 6:07:00 PM