Life 2.0: A suite answer for documents

There’s recently been a lot of talk on the .TXT blog about the less-than-stellar public reception for Windows Vista, Microsoft’s most recent operating system, and a few comments about the seemingly impending death of the Redmond goliath. But there may be a secret weapon.

I’ll be honest here. I don’t know much about the woes of Vista, as I’ve been running Apple’s systems for the past five years – some of the most pleasurable computing years of my life. But I can tell you that these programs are an amazing resource and prove that Microsoft and other boxed-software companies aren’t willing to go quietly into the night.

As the off-the-shelf OS seems to fall from importance I’ve found one great tool that cuts across the operating system versions and has clearly come into its own: the online document suite.

These typically free programs run through your browser while you’re connected to the Internet and act just like their old cousins on your hard drive, but they’re accessible from anywhere with a Net connection. First in this game was Google, which snapped up the online word processor Writely and then built its own online spreadsheet program, and folded them into Google Docs (http://docs.google.com), the free online site for its alternative to MS Office.

This fall they added a presentation program squarely aimed at Microsoft’s Powerpoint application. It’s a pretty powerful combination of new technology, and I’ve found that sometimes it doesn’t work perfectly, but the benefits such as having the ability to let any number of people in different locations simultaneously edit the same document while chatting in a sidebar – far outweigh this lack of polish.

Microsoft has followed suit into the online software game and released Office Live Workspace (http://workspace. officelive.com), also offering word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. I decided to test it out last weekend and found the experience roughly parallel to Google Docs. It’s a little rough around the edges, yet it still works great for basic functions.

I’ve been particularly intrigued by Adobe’s new online Photoshop Express (https://www. photoshop.com/express). This stripped-down image editor (once again free) bares a close resemblance to Apple’s iPhoto software, but this isn’t the full deal. It has no filters or luxurious extras found in the expensive boxed or downloaded versions of Adobe’s Photoshop suite of image-editing tools.

Yet for the average user it’s a great deal. You load up a photo from your digital camera, storing it in a secure online library, and then tweak color and remove red eyes to your heart’s content.

One drawback I’ve found with these online editions of software is that they can be very picky when it comes to browsers so check the recommendations on each site. I lost an entire document when a technical glitch bungled the auto-save feature, and that could have been avoided.

Heard a great podcast, found a great tool or read a smart blog? Any other tips? E-mail me at stevenrneuman@gmail.com.