I’m writing this in ThinkFree Online. It’s a free, web-based Java word processor.
The look and feel is familiar. It’s just like writing in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, except I’m typing in Firefox.
It seems to be a fully featured word processor, with spell check and formatting options. Documents are saved in .doc format and there is a one-click option for PDF conversion. The suite also comprises presentation and spreadsheet equivalents of Powerpoint and Excel.
The service requires registration and login at www.thinkfree.com and includes 30MB free storage space.
Because it’s based on Java, the program is cross platform and should work in Windows, Linux or Macintosh where Java is installed. My first attempts in Linux were unsuccessful, perhaps because I was too impatient for the applet to load.
It took several minutes in Windows using an ADSL connection, but at least there was a progress indicator to keep me interested.
Now that I’m actually writing I can say that it’s a nifty tool. The potential benefits for me and many other people is that you can access a word processor from any computer and save documents in personal storage space online.
For someone on the move, or who switches between operating systems, this could be very handy.
My negative comments may be based more on ignorance than fact, but here they are:
- Slow to load (but promise of faster next time);
- Lack of documentation and no support forum (not that I can find anyway);
- Can’t change measurements to metric;
- Can’t use curly quotes.
The last three should be fairly standard, so it’s either my failure to find them or a symptom of early adoption. Until they’re sorted though, I can’t see myself using this on a regular basis.
It’s currently easier to fire up OpenOffice and email files to myself.
There is supposed to be a utility for uploading documents directly to a blog, but I couldn’t find it, which again reflects the lack of documentation.
Nevertheless, ThinkFree is a fascinating and promising concept, and one that I’ll continue to watch with interest.
After writing this I made some web searches and discovered Writely.
It loaded much faster and only requires Javascript, rather than Java Runtime Environment. I wrote this text in Firefox from Puppy Linux.
It doesn’t seem to have as many features as ThinkFree, but everything works! It saved this text to my hard drive in OpenOffice .odt format. It can also save as doc, rtf, zip or pdf and has some handy collaboration tools, where you can nominate others who may read and edit the document online.
It’s currently free, but a cost is foreshadowed in future for premium services.
Update (January 1, 2012): Writely has been absorbed into Google Docs, my favorite online word processor.
