October 13, 2006
I've recently taken to tracking my daily expenses. I'm not sure if I'm spending too little or too much that's why I started this new personal habit (my current guess is that I'm spending too little).
Because I didn't know about any good budget-tracking software, I went with an Excel spreadsheet loaded with formulas. I started working on it at home, on my personal laptop. Then I realized it would be great if I could work on my sheet from my office laptop, or from any computer for that matter. So I turned to two online office suites that recently made headlines: Google Docs & Spreadsheets (formerly Writely and Google Spreadsheets) and Zoho.
versus 
I'm not here to give a comparative review of the two suites because I've only tried out Zoho Sheet, but from what I've seen, Zoho kicks Google's ass in terms of features and usability. Zoho feels a lot like Microsoft Office, something which millions of computer users are sure to appreciate. Also, Google's suite only offers two applications (word processing and spreadsheets) while Zoho has much, much more (presentations, planner, project management, instant messaging, etc.) and most of them are free.
I'd really like to see Zoho win this battle of the online office suites just so Google doesn't dominate everything on the web. Of course, there's still Microsoft's offering that's yet to come out and I'll be sure to try it out when they launch it.
Because I didn't know about any good budget-tracking software, I went with an Excel spreadsheet loaded with formulas. I started working on it at home, on my personal laptop. Then I realized it would be great if I could work on my sheet from my office laptop, or from any computer for that matter. So I turned to two online office suites that recently made headlines: Google Docs & Spreadsheets (formerly Writely and Google Spreadsheets) and Zoho.
versus 
I'm not here to give a comparative review of the two suites because I've only tried out Zoho Sheet, but from what I've seen, Zoho kicks Google's ass in terms of features and usability. Zoho feels a lot like Microsoft Office, something which millions of computer users are sure to appreciate. Also, Google's suite only offers two applications (word processing and spreadsheets) while Zoho has much, much more (presentations, planner, project management, instant messaging, etc.) and most of them are free.
I'd really like to see Zoho win this battle of the online office suites just so Google doesn't dominate everything on the web. Of course, there's still Microsoft's offering that's yet to come out and I'll be sure to try it out when they launch it.
Labels: finances, Google, office suites, Web 2.0, Zoho
Hi Mark,
I'm Srinidhi from the Zoho Team.
I read your blog post and am glad that you found our web service useful!
Do keep coming back as we're rolling out new features across all the Zoho services every once in a while!
Thanks & Cheers,
Srinidhi.
Mark, for budget tracking. Try Microsoft Money... it's pretty good actually. That's what I use. I've tried out the office live as a beta tester. Looks promising. I've heard about Zoho, but have never had the time to try it out yet. Maybe I will next week.
@Srinidhi: Thanks for dropping by! Keep up the good work on Zoho. :)
@Dukz: I actually gave Microsoft Money a try; my laptop came with it. Found it a bit too confusing and complicated for my simple needs. I'll give it a try again some time soon.