Getting Web Apps vs. Buying Software
Take Away:
- With free and rented software (aka Software as a Service, SaaS) covering almost all of the standard office type of applications it is better to buy the unique package that drives your specific business.
- Computers are becoming so inexpensive that we believe the repair vs. replace break point is so low that switching to a new computer is trivial. Of course coupled with the above item you do not have a lot of stuff on your laptop.
- The increased processor power and increased screen sizes on smart phones means driving more web application into the phone
In a soft economy like we are currently experiencing, IT is one area in which we can clearly lower our cost to operate or gain more productivity for the same expenditure as in the prior year. The change from buying PC application software with your PC/ laptop really does not make sense with what is being offered in the market place. Let's take a look at various options though not an exhaustive review.
The basis of most people's laptop is an office suite made up of a word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation, and data base.
Office 2003/2007 by Microsoft
Microsoft's Office 2003/2007 is the standard by which everything else is measured. Microsoft wisely integrated their email client Outlook 2003/2007 with their office suite which makes for a very integrated package.
Open Office 3.0 by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems has been sponsoring OpenOffice, a free open source office suite, that is the basis of a number of free office suites that are available. Again like with Microsoft the software is a desktop application
Docs/Apps by Google
Google has offered it's Doc product with its Gmail accounts for awhile now and have been consistently improving its functionality. Over the last couple of years Google has enabled the use of Docs offline via the use of Google Fears while enabling the use of the applications while off the Internet.
Zoho
Zoho is not as well know as either Microsoft or Google but they have a very nice set of applications that work very well together.
