In a previous post we looked at some of the productivity application suites that are currently available. Most people will need to perform the tasks that these productivity apps are designed for, writing letters, sending email, doing homework, that sort of thing. Unless you are some sort of hard core gamer that is essentially the main reason we will have purchased a computer for in the first place. Although these days they are becoming more and more important also as an essential tool for helping to manage all the digital photographs you are now taking with your digital camera and phone, but I digress.

The majority of people will purchase a copy of Microsoft Office to do these tasks and once over the initial learning curve will be more than happy with it. In the last post we looked at Microsoft Office and a number of alternatives. But is there anything else out there? Well yes, and they essentially fall into two categories. The first is free or open source applications that provide similar functionality as the applications we have already looked at. There are a number of these available of which OpenOffice is probably the best known example. Do a web search on “OpenOffice” and see what you can find

The second category is the most interesting and what I wanted to talk more about. In this category we have what is becoming known as the “Web Office” applications. These are web applications that exist on and are used via the Internet to perform similar tasks to that delivered by the big suites such as Office. Generally speaking they don’t have the same breadth and depth of functionality that see in our off line suites, but as the vast majority of people only use a fraction of the functionality of those applications, they will have all that is needed. There are now lots of these web based applications offering office type functionality, all you have to do is go find something that appeals to you and give it a go.

So what are some of the benefits of this web based approach to providing software? Well first of all you can access your data and application from any computer anywhere in the world as long as you have access to the internet, this is a big plus if you travel a lot. Secondly you don’t have to buy an expensive license for software that you only partly use, and thirdly you documents are backed up online so that you don’t have to worry about losing your data. The drawbacks are you can only work while connected to the internet, and you have to “trust” someone else with your data. Generally speaking in my view the pros outweigh the cons.

Of course you need to get a yourself a computer, something like the very popular HP Compaq nx7300 Notebook, then fire up the web browser, find your web application and off you go.