Google Apps Review

Did you notice that Google Apps was released? Did you notice that the Google Documents Spell Checker has been broken for about a week? Bad timing eh?

I've been using the free Gooffice for about 4 months now for notes. My vote? It is impressive what they've done, but what they've really proven is that the functionality/price ratio for Word and Excel is most excellent.

Taking desktop functionality away is silly, Gooffice is all about sharing and collaboration, it is more a "sharepoint killer" than desktop replacement. Example 1: The Google document spell checker has been broken in IE for about a week now. Go for a week without a spell checker in Word then tell let me know what you think about online based desktop replacement apps. (side note: flip over to FireFox and spell check is working fine, there is a javascript error in the IE version of Google's spell check code). On the flip side? Create a document and e-mail it to four people, ask each of them to change one sentence and send their change back to you. Then see how long it takes you to merge the changes. Now go to goofice, upload a word document and share it with four people, revel in the online change integration.

Also in Googles defense I will say that GMail and Calendar have been rock solid. Google calendar can even create and reply to Outlook/Exchange calendar notices and support apparently unlimited shared calendars with appointment reminders via SMS. People who already have Outlook are not going to get anything from it, but new businesses looking for shared calendaring could be better off than small business exchange based solutions.