A few days back, I mentioned Gmail as the best free email site. I stand by that recommendation, and will throw in an office suite.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Microsoft Word just fine, although its been overpriced for…ever. Another good free option that ill talk about another time is OpenOffice, which is quite good And has the additional benefit of being free. The problem with both of these solutions, however, is that they need to be installed on your computer. Not only that, but you need to be sitting in front of that computer in order to use them.
Why is that an issue? Well, in my case, I have a computer, a laptop, an iPad, an iPad Mini, and an iPhone. I often find that I need to access a document that’s on a different machine. Trying to synchronize files on all these devices is just about impossible. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a file off in the cloud that you could access from any of these machines, and have them be the same on all other machines? Apple is heading in the right direction with their iCloud service, but that does not work at all with PCs, nor does it work on all software yet. Dropbox is another excellent choice, but I have found that they don’t give enough space to be very practical with their free offering.
The best solution I have found so far is Google Drive. Google Drive offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and many other apps for free, all 100% based online. There’s nothing to download, nothing to install, and it works on any platform with that has a web browser. Did I mention it’s free?
You simply go to http://drive.Google.com set up a new account or use your already-existing Gmail password and click on “Create document.” Then you can create a spreadsheet, word processing document, presentation, or something else, right there in your browser. Type, edit, and save just like you would on a normal computer-based application. When you’re done, just close the browser window, and everything will autosave right on the Google system. When you return to the document, it will be right there where you left it, on any device where you have access to a web browser. If you need to get the document off Google Drive, you can save to your hard drive as a DOC, XLS, or PDF file, among other choices.
This, in my opinion, is the main reason to use a system like this. I can create a note on my iPhone, edit it and expand it on my iPad, then print or otherwise manipulate the document on my PC. With no flash drive, no disks, no emailing or any other inconvenient transfer method. It’s just out there, ready to use.
I can work on a document at home, drive to work, load up on any computer in the office, and go from there. Nothing to carry, nothing to lose, no chance of catching a virus. What could be easier?
One of the main criticisms of Google Drive is that the word processor is not in the same league as Microsoft Word. This is totally true, but how many of those fancy features on Word do you actually use? Probably not many. But even if that’s the case, you can use regular Microsoft Word documents, and save and download them from Google Drive just like any other kind of file. This service used to be called Google Docs, but due to the simplicity of uploading and downloading any kind of file (not just documents- you can store pictures, videos, music, etc.), they have fairly renamed the service Google Drive. It’s just like a drive off in the cloud.
And, in case I forgot to mention it, it’s totally, 100% free! If you already have an account with Gmail, you already have an account with Google Drive. Go over to http://drive.Google.com login with your Gmail password and try it. Totally free
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