Monday, October 1, 2007

So far, Office 2.0 sucks

Adobe acquired Virtual Ubiquity. They made a Flex based word processor called Buzzword. I never used it but the screenshots looked pretty slick. There is this sleek black rounded corner look to it. Once you remove the sex appeal what does it bring to the table as far as functionality to the end-user? What is so innovative about it? It's a word processor that runs in a web browser. That seems so 2004.

There is this huge amount of hype surrounding "Office 2.0". I'm getting really tired of it. I want substance. A lot of great ideas out there but the products have not been compelling enough for me to give up my traditional Office programs. They're slow (read Java Swing) and/or they have less features. They work great for writing blog, forum, and wiki posts. When I want to create a professional looking resume or presentation, do I log onto Google Docs? Hell no! I fire up Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. Both apps are lightning fast, they do everything I want and the latter is absolutely free. Then I upload it to Google Docs to share it.