For those of us who cannot afford to upgrade to the newest version of Microsoft Office, there is another option that will make the upgrades for you. No, they won't upgrade Office, but you can use web-based applications--and they are free.
One such application described in step #18 is Zoho offering Microsoft Office-like applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation makers, databases, calenders, and more.
I experimented with both the word processor (Zoho Writer) and spreadsheet (Zoho Sheet). For anyone who is already familiar with MS Word and/or MS Excel, it will not take long to get accustomed to Zoho's version. I did find that the programs took a little time to load and there are not all the options available that you would find in an off-the-shelf product.
Zoho offers some nice features, such as the ability for various users to work on the same document, access to documents from any internet terminal, and the ability to turn documents into blogs quite easily.
However, I have some concerns with web-based applications. As I have already mentioned, Zoho does not have the range of options and utilities (I miss not having the auto-fill feature available on Excel). I also would like to know how secure the site is for saving personal and/or vital information. After all, there have been plenty of news reports of businesses releasing so-called secured information or reports of the information being stolen. Plus, if someone decides to use web-based applications exclusively, what happens if his or her internet connection is down?
On a personal note, I did not like how Zoho automatically logged me into its applications. Although this feature may seem nice in that you would not have to log-in for each new window or session, I would not like it if I was using a public computer. Apparently, this is embedded in Zoho and not with the internet browser since I tried it with both MS Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Overall, I am glad these applications are available and I may use them more and more as web-based applications' features become superior to older versions of purchased products I am using now.
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2 comments:
Thanks for trying out Zoho Writer/Sheet and writing about them here, Argonaut! Glad that you like our products.
About the logging in time, we are on it and it will be much faster soon.
And Zoho Sheet does have the auto-fill feature. Am quoting from our What's New page about this feature :
# Fill series (auto-fill) is supported. You can either fill down or fill to the right.
# To enter a vertical series of 1, 2, 3, etc you can just type 1 and then drag the small box at the bottom right of the selected cell while holding the Ctrl key. Without the Ctrl key it will paste the same value in all the dragged cells.
# Similarly you can fill months like Jan, Feb, etc. and dates like Sep-27-2006, Sep-28-2006, etc.
# The most important use is when you have a formula and you want to fill down similar formula for a range of cells.
We do have a very good security policy in place at Zoho and we assure you that all your data is safe with us. We have a Zoho Plug-in for Microsoft Office which lets you work offline (on Microsoft Office) and you can sync-up to Zoho when online. We do have plans to provide further options for working offline.
About auto-login into Zoho applications, it is just the default option. Please log-on to http://accounts.zoho,com and you can change your options there. (clicking on the 'SSO' link there against each service)
Do write to me at aravind(at)zoho(dot)com if have more queries. It will be my pleasure assisting you further.
Also check out the other Zoho applications at www.zoho.com (we just released Zoho Wiki a couple of days back)
Oops, a small error in the Zoho Accounts URL that I quoted above. It is actually
https://accounts.zoho.com
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