Microsoft Office or online office products?

In the ever-expanding marketplace, there are so many options for an organization to look at when choosing the right software. Traditional desktop office productivity suites like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org are now finding real competition from online/hosted software options from Google, Zoho, and ThinkFree.

What tool(s) are you using at your organization? Have you committed to only using one type of office suite? Or do you use a desktop suite for some functions and an online suite for others? What are the advantages and disadvantages you've found?

This week, TechSoup will be publishing a new article from our friends at Idealware that discuss this exact topic. We'd love to hear about your experiences so share them here!

Hi Becky!

I just thought I might share my experiences here! I worked for a company that was considering switching from Microsoft Office 2003 to Google Docs in order to save on licensing costs. There were a few issues that kept them from switching over completely, including power; we found that Google Docs was simply not versatile enough for our  purposes. Things like section breaks, endnotes, page numbering are all easily available in traditional suites like Office and OpenOffice, but they were hard to get at in Google Docs or simply nonexistent. They ended up switching to OpenOffice, which worked well for our purposes, but as of the moment I do not think Google Docs is the right choice for an organization that needs formatting and versatility. I have not used Zoho or ThinkFree, so I can't speak for them- my two cents can only go to Google Docs. Hope this helps!