Do you see free online tools like these eventually replacing expensive software like MS Office?
I've been using Google Documents for some time and they are definitely a great idea, but like with everything else, there are “pros and cons”.
As a user of a netbook with a solid state drive (instead of a hard disk), on which you can’t install much due to a very small capacity, having some kind of a substitute to MS Office is very helpful. I don’t have time to finish everything on my desktop computer at home, so being able to take notes and keep journal every day using Google Docs is very handy. The fact that you can access your documents at any time from any computer is also very convenient.
There are two other situations where Google Docs can be extra helpful. It is common to MS Office that someone could have a problem with opening a Word or Excel document due to different versions of the software, but this cannot happen with Google Docs. Another very helpful thing particularly for the people using public computers at the library, is writing a resume using a template. MS Office 2007 doesn’t contain such templates, they are actually stored online and you have to download them in order to use them, which is impossible with these computers. Google Docs offer lots of templates, not only for resumes.
On the other hand, regardless all the convenience, Google Documents are not nearly as sophisticated as MS Office, at least not yet. Not only that they don’t have all the features like MS Office, but even those that Google Docs do have don’t always work properly. There are so many things that need to be corrected and improved. Formatting either a text document or a spreadsheet can be a pain. Sometimes it looks like Google Docs have their own character and just won’t obey one's commands. Very frustrating.
By the way, the same problem exists with Blogger’s post editor.
Google Docs are also very slow, regardless of the computer configuration or Internet access. I can type a half of a sentence before seeing it on the screen. So, for documents that are more complicated or need to look really nice, or whenever I can chose between those two, I would rather use MS Office.
It's hard to say whether free online tools can ever completely replace software like MS Office, because we have to keep in mind that behind MS Office are twenty years of making and improving different versions of it.
Maybe Google doesn't even have to try to replace MS Office with its Docs, because there are advantages of using them comparing to MS Office (they come free, after all).
What I do hope is that Google will work hard in order to improve these tools because they have their potential, but improvement is definitely what they need.
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