Zoho - Office 2.0

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Zoho - Office 2.0

Nikhil Rastogi, Dec 09, 2007 1137 hrs IST

Is this the future of Office?

Expert Review

Starting off with Zoho

To start off with, you would need to pick any one of the products listed at www.zoho.com, I chose the most popular and widely used Zoho Writer. The good thing is that since it's a suite, you don't need to separately register for all the remaining consumer apps. If you'd like to delve into enterprise apps like Zoho CRM, you would need additional registration. In fact, most Web 2.0 apps make it even simpler, they use a demo login to glimpse over the software before even registering for free.

Registering is snap. Just enter the required essential details and you can start editing right away. I'm glad the new Web 2.0 movement has done away with tedious marketing survey registrations (remember those?).

Working with files

When logged in, the layout is very self explanatory; you have the editor with several icons related to tasks that can be performed, you can hover over them for explanations.

Pay particular attention to "Minimize/Maximise" view in Zoho Writer that allows one to view further functions other than those related to the Writer application at hand. For most of the part, Zoho apps have a similar feel but not particularly a consistent interface. E.g., all Zoho apps allow to share your documents freely from a Share menu, Zoho Writer has a text menu item above the toolbars, while Zoho Sheet (Spreadsheet) has a button on the top right hand corner.

These aren't show stoppers, but any application aiming towards 'Suite-wise' unification needs to be consistent across its own apps. This will of course change slowly as these apps are evolving towards a more unified structure.

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Zoho - Office 2.0

Is this the future of Office?

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