#18 (Week 8) Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools

Zoho Writer is a web-based word processing tool that has many advantages, the major one is it's free, free I hear you say, YES it's free. Zoho Writer has the advantage of accessing files from any computer as long as we have access to the internet so we don't have to worry about dealing with defective floppy discs or using a flash drive. You can upload your existing documents/files and put them on the website, your documents are stored on a server on the internet which makes it accessible to all people you invite to edit this document. The good thing about Zoho Writer is people can work on this document simultaneously and create text collaboratively, you can track changes to this document and revert to earlier versions of it. You can edit, save and create new documents from any computer - the compatibility issue with different software versions doesn't exist here, which solves the problem of being unable to open particular files on the Learn.Net pcs e.g. Microsoft Works files. The features that Zoho Writer offers like - page numbering, footnotes, templates, sharing, publishing to the web, exporting files as a .pdf document and an email feature is far superior to Microsoft Word. However the application is dependent on the internet and maybe a liability, because if one is dependent on the internet and the internet goes down then work can be seriously lost/delayed. So in this instance it may not totally replace the traditional word processor. Another plus is documents can be emailed on-masse or uploaded to the web or blogs. The major advantage of Zoho Writer is that any changes I make to a document will regularly save across the internet to Zoho Writer, if I am working offline my documents can be downloaded and stored on my laptop, I can then view and edit my documents offline. When I go back online my changes will automatically be saved to the server, and others can then see the changes I have made.