Leaving Microsoft Behind
| More and more users are leaving Microsoft Office behind. One interesting development in Apple's recent announcement of iWork 08 was the inclusion of Numbers, an easy to use spreadsheet program which when packaged together with Pages (wordprocessor) and Keynote (presentation) gives the Mac a nice suite of software. See: What's Behind Apple's iWork? Though I have a copy of Microsoft Office for my eMac at home, on my work computer I've begun using NeoOffice, an OpenSource suite that is compatible with MS Office. Works fantastic with no compatibility issues with Word or Excel documents from either Mac or PC platforms. So far I love it and it's free. Obviously Google is trying to horn in on this market also with their documents and spreadsheets applications. I'm surprised at how many people do not know about Google doc's and spreadsheets. I use that too. Recently it I used it for a wedding I was doing with some friends in another city. I put the order of service on Google Docs and gave them permissions to edit and we all collaborated on it. The obvious downside is that the documents reside on Google's servers and not your computer. If you want access to your documents you must be online. On the other hand, the documents are not stuck on your computer when you are some place else and you can share them easier for collaborative efforts. There are a couple other players in this game that I just learned about .... ZOHO.com: Online Office, Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, CRM and more ThinkFree Online beta These both look like excellent choices as more and more people leave Microsoft behind. |
posted by theultrarev at 9:12 AM
Comments on "Leaving Microsoft Behind"
-
Luke said ... (6:13 PM, August 12, 2007) :
post a commentUR:
Our Worship Team (which is NOT just the music team!!!) is now using Google documents. The head of the music team plugs in songs and who is on the music team that week, the Worship Team Leader plugs in Scripture readings and theme from the pastor, the Sacred Space team puts ideas in, the Service Coordinater plugs in details, and together we build the order of worship. If the WTL has information a couple of weeks in advance, then the music team and Sacred Space team can look at that information and build on it.
When it comes to printing out an Order of Worship, all the information is in one place, updated by our dedicated team of volunteers from a variety of locations.
This is especially important right now, as we are "between pastors" at our church, and have different guest speakers each week.
It is working pretty well. And you can always download the document if you need an offline copy, or e-mail the document if someone who is not collaborating needs a copy for some reason.
Pretty cool.
On an unrelated note - nice to see a blog entry from Stacey. Must have finally gotten that upgrade that lets the Mac run off corn-based ethanol.... (grin)