Microsoft’s cash cows of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint continue to sell hundreds of millions of copies. OpenOffice may offer a free, open source alternative, and Apple has its iWorks suite, but in terms of numbers they are relatively small. The latest version of Microsoft Office – version 10 – stores your documents on the internet so that they can be accessed wherever there is a connection. OpenOffice allows you to run a copy of itself, plus all your documents, from a USB drive. Both products, however, are inextricably linked to the traditional PC.
A new option is emerging, however. After years of dominance by Microsoft, the way we use computers for everyday tasks is in the midst of a huge transition. As we shift to using applications that are online only, we are entering the age of the cloud and one of the main challengers to Microsoft in this new race is Google Apps.
ICT Champions Julie Harris and Mark Walker complied a review of Google Docs for the Civil Society magazine in summer 2010, which is available now as a free download from this site. Take a look now to see how it works and what they think it can offer.
Is it safe to store your information on the internet? Can you trust Google, Microsoft or any other other big cloud computing providers? Is it legal to store your data online? Despite some of the obvious advantages to moving some or all of your computing services onto the web, these are the sorts of questions which many people are asking before making the switch. 
ICT Champion: South East England 