Surviving on free Web-based services alone

By Allison Linn

updated 3:42 p.m. ET Dec. 23, 2005

SEATTLE - For Microsoft Corp., 2005 was the year the big bad Web came calling. Again.

A decade after Microsoft counterattacked to beat Netscape in the Web browser wars, the company finds itself surrounded yet again by competitors looking to leverage the Internet to gain an edge over the industry titan.

Web-based software and services are emerging for everything from checking e-mail to collaborating on business tasks.

Microsoft's concern is twofold: The paid services are convenient and easy to update, potentially offering an edge over Microsoft's Office and other desktop-bound applications. And the free services are, well, free; advertising often supports them. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

For now at least, Redmond-based Microsoft says it doesn't see these alternatives as a major threat, regarding them mainly as complementary to Office. And yet, Microsoft recently launched its own companywide push towards offering more Web-based software and services.

The question is, how scared should Microsoft be? To get a sense, this reporter decided to spend one week relying as much as possible on free software and services — available via the Internet — for everyday business tasks.

Although I sought to use the free Office alternatives whenever I could, I allowed myself to make exceptions when it would seriously interfere with my job. I continued to use The Associated Press' writing and editing program, which is not made by Microsoft. I also often had to use Microsoft Outlook since — like most workers — I depend on e-mail for my job and Outlook is tightly tied to the Microsoft Exchange e-mail server that AP employs.

I began by looking for viable a word processing alternative to Microsoft Word.

OpenOffice's "Writer" is a close replica, right down to the annoying tendency both have to try to "help" you when no help is needed. Writer repeatedly tried to finish the words I was typing. It also flashed a light bulb in the corner of the screen — apparently its version of Word's much-derided Mr. Clippy.

Still, the entire free OpenOffice suite, which includes database, spreadsheet and other applications, was easy to download with a broadband connection.

And once I had Writer on my machine, I found I didn't miss Microsoft Word at all. Many of the commands were the same, and I was able to easily open Word documents using Writer. The program also makes it extremely easy to save documents in the PDF format, something Microsoft only plans to offer with the forthcoming version of Office, due out in 2006.

Web-based word processing programs promise the further convenience of being able to access documents on any computer, and easily collaborate over the Internet with others.

One such product, Writely, was very easy to set up, and it was simple to create and store documents. It was a breeze with Writely to import Word documents already on my hard drive, and relatively simple to save Writely documents in either the Word or OpenOffice format.

My only beef was that I couldn't save documents as PDFs, but a spokeswoman said there are plans to fix that.

Competitor gOffice offered more sophisticated formatting options, and it was easy to print documents as PDFs. I had difficulty setting up a gOffice account, although the company was helpful when I called. Still, after the initial problems were resolved I found the process of saving and accessing files needlessly cumbersome.

MORE FROM TECH AND GADGETS

Tech and gadgets Section Front

Kindle to get audible menus, bigger font   Google search results include ‘real-time’ data ‘CrunchPad’ morphs into the ‘Joo Joo’ tablet Last-minute Web sites to save your holiday Hey, Tiger Woods: Why so dumb about tech? Teen Internet addicts more likely to self harm Will CrunchPad re-emerge with new name? AP source: Apple in talks to buy Lala.com Microsoft, Yahoo seal search deal 10 iPhone apps for the holidays that sparkle Tech and gadgets Section Front   Add Tech and gadgets headlines to your news reader: