May07
09
ThinkFree Office
The lads (and lasses, I presume) at ThinkFree were kind enough to ship me a USB drive with a copy of ThinkFree office. ThinkFree has a free online collaborative office suite, which is great for small business who desire to move away from MS Office for whatever reason. The version I received on USB is a desktop version which is made available at $49 per user - big plus is that it’s cross-platform (Mac, Linux and Windows).
ThinkFree reminds me of OpenOffice in some ways and has had some of the more complex functionality of it’s proprietary counterparts removed, leaving a fairly basic but still more than adequate offering which includes a word processor, spreadsheet application and presentation software.
What with Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets gaining steady market share, online office suites are only going to get more popular, especially for those countries that have excellent connectivity and bandwidth. I get the sense we are still lagging a bit and not fully enjoying the benefits of these online collaborative alternatives.
Zoho works great for me, I am however experiencing problems with their spreadsheet app but they are working on it.
I’m not sure if online only applications such as SoHo and Google Documents will really replace full blown desktop apps. I for one want to have full control over my data and not rely on a company to be around in five years from now to allow me access.
ThinkFree Office is a interesting alternative. Does it support ODF (or ISO 26300) document format?
K<o>
Busy, supporting non technical users of OpenOffice.org
P.S.: Just realized that you are blogging from SA. Are you aware that OpenOffice.org has government backing to translate its versions in the (I believe) 11 national languages of SA? This is important because it allows many people to participate in the information economy that would otherwise be excluded. This is the power of Open Source in action!
K<o>
Busy, providing technical support to non technical users of OpenOffice