Round One: ThinkFree Office Wins

I have been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets since it was available to Gmail users. I actually wanted to try Writely, but signups had already been shut down by the time I got to it due to the Google takeover. I waited a while and when Writely had been Googlized I jumped at the chance to play with it. When Google Spreadsheets became available I made sure I took the time out to play with that as well. I think the idea of having a portable office suite has always been appealing to me for several reasons:

• I’ve had a few catastrophic data losses over time.
• I like to be able to access some documents no matter where I am.
• Constantly synchronizing documents between my laptop, desktop, and my file server is tedious.
• The ability to work on group projects without emailing files back and forth saves time and reduces the risk of virus transmission.

Since the beginning Google Docs was always slow to me. I thought it was just normal because the applications were somewhat complex and script heavy. I also had quite a difficult time downloading my files and deleting files from the site. It took so many clicks to move files around that it’s always been a point of mild frustration for me. I never thought anything of it until I tried ThinkFree Office. After only an hour or so of playing around with their applications, I cleaned out my Google Docs archive and moved everything to their site.

There are a lot of things I like about ThinkFree, but these are the most important to me:

• The site responds quickly and the applications are snappy.
• The aesthetics of the site are very good and the layout is well thought out.
• There is a PowerPoint compatible web application along with a Word Processor and a Spreadsheet application.
• It takes very few clicks to upload or download single or multiple files.
• There are AFFORDABLE desktop applications which you can purchase that coincide with the web applications for working offline.

So far I am very impressed with the suite. I am going to try to spend more time editing documents within ThinkFree Office on the web so that I can see how it reacts to heavy use and more complex functions than I have used before. I hope that the applications continue to be this usable as the suite grows and I hope that the desktop based versions of the applications stay affordable as well. I would also like to see a Mac version of the desktop suite. Once that is available I would have to say that ThinkFree Office would be a very hard competitor to beat in this particular software market.