It's quite unfair to judge Zoho Writer and GoogleDocs on my first go at them. After reading "How to Become a GoogleDocs Power User," I know there are those for whom collaboration tools like this are nirvana. And I think the more you use and adopt the features of one, the more dependent you become on that one.
In my cursory usage of them, I thought Zoho Writer was easier to use. It showed me a clean beginning document, was easy to alter, had more features - or they were easier to see on the template, really felt more like a word processor to me than GoogleDocs.
The document on GoogleDocs was a mess when I got it. I had no clue what the original document looked like, and I would find it very difficult to collaborate without a side-by-side comparison with the original. The advertising for both referred to easy reverting to earlier editions, but I didn't find that feature with the sample document. And it seems that if you were using GoogleDocs with a number of collaborators, you'd have to set some ground rules for revision notation.
The Founding Fathers - my vision of them is from "1776" - would love the concept. Think of the travel it would've saved, and some were in very poor health and/or elderly. But the vivid oratory would've been lost! Much of what they created in person exists in the document because of great passionate speeches and debate. Some of that you just can't do with a word processor.
bweldon
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
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