Week 8 #18

#18 I've played with Google docs online but had never tried Zoho Writer. I had fun checking out the different templates and even added some to my account. I was interested and occasionally amused to see the great variety available. I noticed that there aren't so many fonts available as there are in Word, though there's a respectable variety, mostly web-compatible. There are also fewer special characters, but I like the way a character is shown to the right, enlarged and named when you hover over it. And I noticed that there is only one bullet option. The icons are easy to understand and mostly familiar. Cute emoticons, too, though they didn't publish when I transferred this doc to my blog. I like the fact that you can add Technorati tags and transfer them to your doc.

So while it doesn't offer the number of choices that Word does, it's online, it's free, and it's easy to use. Also, you can store your docs online, so you don't have to use hard drive space and you can access them from any computer with internet capability. I also like the fact that you can export docs in so many formats and and add pix and links so easily. In going through the FAQs I noticed that if you're planning to share docs with someone whom you want to have add to or edit them they must also have a Zoho Writer account. (This is true with all the Zoho apps.)

I did notice that Google docs offers similar choices but has a different look with tabs for editing, inserting, and revising options. They seem to have more special characters and an option for adding comments within the text (in color), but fewer font and size choices.

When I looked at spreadsheets I noticed that, aside from layout, Zoho and Google were very similar. Google offers folders to organize while Zoho uses tags. Google also has a selection of charts, while Zoho has only a column chart option.

Zoho has many other choices-wikis, show (a PowerPoint type of app), a planner, a database creator, a meeting planner/notifier. It's definitely more versatile than Google.