More Office Offerings
For some reason, it seems that lately office suite applications are suddenly being created by everyone. Some of this may come from the success of the previously reviewed Open Office suite. The success of this platform has shown users are willing to try Office alternatives. Microsoft has also been slow to provide an on-line offering to complement its Office suite. Whatever the reason, the productivity applications in use today are going to change over the next few years.
One almost certain change is the addition of on-line components to office suites. The extent of this on-line presence, however, remains to be seen. Many new offerings are completely on-line with no software to buy or download. The user simply logs in to the website and begins working. Other offerings use the web to varying extents for collaboration or file sharing.
Over the next four weeks four different applications will be reviewed. A little known on-line word processor, Buzzword, will be reviewed next week. The following week the better know on-line office suite, Google Docs will be reviewed. During the first week in November, Lotus Symphony, an off-line office suite will be reviewed. Finally, on 14 November, Microsoft Office 2007 will be examined.
These applications, along the Open Office and iWork, represent the various ways work may be done in the future. Stay tuned to see what the future holds.